


A Family Reconstructed

by NevillesGran



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It maybe?, Kid Fic, Skifander, no actual shipping yet but I'm sure we'll get to it, no plot planned; literally making it up as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-04-02 16:12:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 24,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4066330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Klaus decides not to tell Gil the truth after the security vault incident, so when Gil starts breaking through a few weeks later, instead of making a friend, he determines to escape Castle Wulfenbach and find his REAL family, who can't be just dumb, dead rural sparks. They can't be.</p><p>Everyone ends up in Skifander.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: An Opportunity Missed

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that these are really short chapters thus far and I'm making the plot up as I go along, so I don't know whether that will continue or not. Also you should feel free to suggest further developments.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A turning point.

Klaus had to lean forward over his desk just to see his son shrinking in the chair on the other side. It was a vicious cycle of exaggerated posture: the more Klaus loomed, the more Gilgamesh huddled in on himself as he choked out the story he’d found in the security vault. He had never been supposed to see that; Klaus hadn’t even imagined the possibility when he had it put in the files just for the sake of not having a conspicuous lack of papers. He certainly hadn’t imagined how Gil’s cheeks would be shining with tears as his whole skinny frame shook with attempts to gulp back sobs. The truth was on the tip of Klaus’s tongue, if only it might bring some hope back into those big brown eyes, just the same shape as Zantabraxus’s—

There was a knock at the door and a jäger walked in, towing a redhead with a mulish expression on his pre-adolescent face. The jäger saluted. “Hy found anodder vun, Herr Baron. He vas in de Records Vault, reading vun ov de books.”

A hundred thoughts flashed through Klaus’s mind as he took in the boys’ mirrored expressions of dismay at finding each other caught. Most of them centered around the facts that he didn’t trust Aaronev much farther than he could throw him and that entire clan was trained in espionage and assassination since practically birth. He barely held back a very politically inappropriate snarl.

“Thank you, corporal,” he said coolly instead. “Leave him here, and go check his room for anything else suspicious, please. Do your best to be clever about it.” There would be **something** , Klaus was confident. The only student not writing letters home full of reports on the Castle and their fellow students was Gilgamesh, and if this was the sort of company he kept, Klaus determined it entirely sensible to continue keeping him in the dark about to whom he could hypothetically write. It was **safer**.

The guard left, and Sturmvorous took the opportunity to lean over and whisper something in Gil’s ear. Gil, eyes still damp with rears, bit his lip in doubt. That wasn’t nearly enough mistrust by Klaus’s standard. Whatever Sturmvoraus was or wasn’t hiding in his room, the boys would have to be separated for Gilgamesh’s sake.


	2. Prologue Part 2: An Idea Hatched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gil thinks things through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also I'm not editing these much so please please please point out any typos and I'll fix them.

Gil lay on his bed, drumming his heels angrily on his mattress and trying to ignore the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t **fair** , that Tarvek had gotten sent away when he really wanted to stay on the Castle, didn’t even **like** his family much (Gil couldn’t imagine they were **that** bad, but Tarvek did have nightmares sometimes that he’d never explain, so maybe there was **something** not all that great about having a family.) But he got sent back while Gil, who would give absolutely **anything** to be sent down to earth to join a family, even a pig farmer’s, had to stay on the Castle where he had no friends and classes were stupid and Zulenna stole his book and held it out of his reach **again _,_** until he jumped so hard that he tripped on a chair and even Theo laughed, when usually Theo was at least **sort of** nice. It wasn’t **fair**.

Or maybe it was **really, really perfectly** fair, in the mean way of “fair” they’d been learning about in Government class where everyone got what they **deserved**. But if that was how the world worked, then surely Gil would have a house all his own with a library and lab and mother and father who weren’t dead and also hadn’t been turned into stupid **sausages** , and probably Tarvek would have all the Muses he always talked about and the Baron would have to go to school and have people tell **him** what to do all day, and Zulenna would just be dunked upside-down in a giant barrel of **pig fat** until all her clothes and hair were ruined and she couldn’t even talk in her snotty, taunting voice. **That** would show them. Gil had some ideas for a winch that wouldn’t get too greasy to hold her in place…

Except Gil wasn’t sure if he even wanted to follow what were supposed to be the Baron’s rules like that anymore. If **this** was a “just” punishment for just **looking around** …it wasn’t right at **all**. And if the Baron was wrong about this, then what else was he wrong about?

That was a new thought for Gil, since the disasterous incident in the Record Valt three weeks ago. It wasn’t like he **talked** to Baron Wulfenbach much, particularly since Von Pinn came and the school started to really fill up. But he was a constant in Gil’s life. Almost all the earliest memories he’d ever been able to dredge up involved the Baron, striding about and shouting at people or fighting monsters or (and Gil wasn’t certain he hadn’t just imagined this one) carrying Gil in his arms until Gil fell asleep. Gil couldn’t remember anything before that, definitely not a rogue sausage-maker.

The dates had been right, though, in the horrible file in the Records Vault. According to them, Gil had been the first student the Baron picked up, before there even was a school—which fit with Gil’s sketchy memories—when Gil was barely three years old, which fit with how sketchy the memories were. It all sounded right.

But it didn’t **feel** right. Gil knew he was probably just telling himself that because he didn’t want it to be true, because it was the lamest, dumbest most embarrassing lineage ever and meant that the other kids pretty much **did** have a right to pick on him. But Tarvek hadn’t thought it was true either, and Tarvek was pretty good at telling when people were lying, so Gil clung to the hope. And he hadn’t heard the story about the pig farmer Spark and his rogue sausage construct until he was at least **five** , and he was pretty sure it had been new, then. Which meant it **couldn’t** be where he was from.

Gil sat up as another idea struck him. If the Baron’s records were wrong—he still skirted around the idea that the Baron himself might be mistaken, but maybe someone else had gotten it wrong and filed it when the Baron was busy fighting enemy clanks or something. If the records were wrong, then maybe he **still had family somewhere.** All he had to do was find them, and not only would that disprove the story about the stupid pig Spark but it would mean he got a **family**.

All Gil’s favorite ideas came rushing back as he jumped up to pace around the tiny bedroom. Maybe he was a secret prince? Or the lost Heterodyne heir! Or—

His breath caught in his throat. If he was something really good, maybe the Baron **knew** and the story in the Records Vault was a **deliberate lie**. To keep Gil’s identity secret—to keep him safe from enemies? That might make sense if he really was a Heterodyne; the Baron had been their friend. Or was it meant to be secret from **Gil** , because he was something like **Storm King** and the Baron was **trying** to keep him all downtrodden so he wouldn’t grow up and take of Europa **himself**.

Gil felt almost feverish with excitement, like tiny sparks were racing up and down his veins. Or his nerves? His nerves, more like. He felt **extraordinarily** awake. The first thing he had to do was get off Castle Wulfenbach, and then find his family—no, he had to **invent** something to find his family, he felt absolutely mad for inventing right now. Some sort of recognizer device, or better yet a locator, that would search them out…and something to get Gil **to**  them as well. Maybe a flying machine, with some sort of super family-seeking compass built in? But that’d be pretty hard to sneak away in, and if he wanted to build something—and oh _golly_ did he want to build something—he would need to do it here on the Castle, in one of the many unused labs. Even something small would take all his sneaking ability. So it had to be fast as well, super fast, **insta** -fast. They’d been discussing faster-than-light travel in Science class the other day, mostly in the context of it not really being possible, but that was almost as dumb as a rogue sausage-making clank—everyone knew that **anything** was possible with enough experimentation. Gil wasn’t sure quite _how_ yet, but there were seven whole hours until he’d be expected at breakfast and he knew just which wall panel to pull aside in the hallway to reveal the girder to climb along until he got to the ducts leading into the library. He could do **research**. A teleportation device would be ideal, really, to just **zap** him to where his family was regardless of walls or anything. Because even an FTL-enabled craft—though he had **ideas** for that; it could look all sleek and beautiful…but it would have to physically get off the Castle somehow…

Gil slipped out of his room, head buzzing with ideas, and tiptoed down the hallways to the secret passage in the wall. And if, just possibly, he **wasn’t** related to anyone famous, then at least he’d be away from all the bullies in the school, and wouldn’t have to come back if he didn’t want to. **And** he would have proved himself cleverer than **all** of them. That would show everyone, even **Baron Wulfenbach**. Show them **_all_**.


	3. Chapter 1: A Decision Postponed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zeetha has an unexpected guest.

Zeetha was eight years old and had only been a zumil for the last two months of it, but she was a War Princess of Skifander, so when the boy appeared in her bedroom just before the crack of dawn, literally on top of her in the bed, it wasn’t even an entire second before had him rolled onto the floor with her knees on his chest and her knife at his throat. He stared up at her in bewilderment, pale as lichen and gasping for air. Considerately, she shifted until the bulk of her weight was on his stomach rather than his chest, so he could breath without wheezing. But she didn’t take the knife from his throat.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

He gaped like he didn’t understand what she’d said. Maybe he didn’t—he didn’t look very Skifandrian, too pale even without that sick pallor and hair light brown and fluffy—the same texture as Zeetha’s, which she got from her foreigner father. And his clothing, ragged and dripped with mysterious chemical stains, was definitely not Skifandrian.

But before Zeetha could repeat her demand in any of the languages of the Dark Countries, or even in the halting Romanian her mother had taught her, the boy’s eyes rolled up and he passed out. Well. That simplified things for a moment. Except it left her questions unanswered so really nothing could be certain yet.

She tucked her knife back into her belt, though, and rifled through his pockets. There were three on each pant leg and four on his shirt, and many looked like he’d sewn them on himself. All were filled with a bizarre assortment of tools and tricks, from a three-pronged screwdriver to a small glass vial of something electric blue and fizzing, which she set carefully aside while thanking Ashtara that it hadn’t broken. It looked like something out of her mother’s lab. Was he a Gifted? That certainly explained the number of tools he was carrying, as well as the way he’d appeared out of nowhere—like in the old stories of Luhia’s Mirror. But he was so young, no older than Zeetha herself!

While Zeetha used some of the twine from the foreign boy’s pocket to tie him to one leg of her bed, the dawn bell rang to call all children to morning training. Zeetha groaned. It wasn’t fair, she wasn’t even just one of the babies any more, she was a **zumil**. But her kolee, her mother, had left the city for a couple days to renegotiate a treaty with the Tamanin, and it might get messier than (according to her mother) a two-month zumil was prepared for, so she’d left Zeetha at home back in the children’s quarters again. It was so embarrassing.

(And there were always the people whispering in corners that the real reason she’d been left behind was that the War Queen had finally realized her half-foreign notwan daughter was a lost cause, could never be good enough, could never be a real Warrior Princess when she wasn’t even really a real human. Nobody said these things in front of Zeetha, of course, but she saw the looks and heard the cut-off conversations just fine on her own.)

She had to go now, before Aunt Ekini sent someone to look for her, or worse, came herself. Really, she had to report that a strange foreign boy had randomly appeared on her bed then fainted. But something held her back. He looked, well, he looked sick, actually, which was a much better argument than “it’s against the rules not to” for why she should tell an adult about him. But he also looked…familiar. Not like she remembered his face, but his eyes were the same muddy brown as her own and his pointy chin reminded her of old pictures of her mother. Who had a very powerful Gift, and that was supposed to run in families, right? So what if, just maybe…

And he was really definitely unconscious; she lifted up one eyelid and found the whites still showing, traced in too-vivid veins. He definitely wouldn’t wake up before she got back from morning lessons, at least. She could decide what to do about him then.

But what if someone came in and saw him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stealing, with permission, some Skifander headcanons from Han502653's A Different Zeetha AU. In this chapter, mostly just the Skif word "notwan" meaning one whose twin is still alive and so, according to superstition, only has half their soul.


	4. Chapter 2: An Escape Made (Twice!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the stories, heroes always wake up chained to a slab in the villain's laboratory. Gil was tied up under a very dusty bed. He escaped anyway.

Gil woke with a sneeze. He jerked up with the force of it and hit his head on something hard, looming just a couple inches over him and almost completely cutting off any light. His shoulder was stretched painfully as well, strain shooting back to where his wrists were tied to…a bed post? Gil craned his neck back as far as it would go, trying to see what was above his head. Yes, He was under a bed like a piece of luggage, and his hands stretched up and tied to one of the bed posts. This was sort of like what was supposed to happen to heroes when they were captured by evil sparks, but not really.

Not that he was in that sort of situation. Probably. His memory was sort of hazy—he thought the teleport might have exploded as it sent him off? Von Pinn had burst furiously into the lab just as he was finishing, with the Baron right behind her looking…Gil wasn’t sure what the Baron’s face had been doing. Gil had been all hooked up into the machine, his blood in the subspace tracer and the power cable spliced into the defractor over his heart because it would be much less easy to detect or trace if he used energy from his own body rather than the wall socket. He’d pulled the lever before the adults could reach him, and everything had gone yellow and sharp and floating and stretched, and a sound like the smell of rotten mint. Then he’d been here, and the girl with the knife had knocked him out and, he guessed, tied him up. Or maybe he’d just fallen unconscious himself; that was more likely. Between the teleportation and the corporogalvanic defractor—which _might_ not have been such a good idea—he felt **awful** _ **.** _  

And he was tied up and stuffed in the dusty space under a bed. But he could do something about **that**.

Nobody else was in the room that he could see or hear, so he felt safe wiggling around on the warm stone floor until most of his body was out from under the bed. But he was still tied tight to one leg, and his tools were all the way across the room, at least a meter out of reach of his desperately reaching feet. Next to the bed, however, was a small chest that looked like it doubled as a nightstand, Keeping his head carefully out of the way, he twisted around and kicked it until a golden top and a small whetstone fell off. Where there was a whetstone, there must be a blade, right? He kicked it a couple more times and was rewarded with not a knife but a handheld mirror. Perfect!

In another fifty minutes or so, Gil was using the largest shard of mirror to peek inconspicuously into the hallway. It would have been much earlier, but he’d gotten distracted modifying the toys in the chest to be more interesting, and setting up a couple traps in case someone tried to sneak up on him. The strange, scanty clothing in the small wardrobe by the door had been particularly useful for that.

Of course, he wasn’t actually sure if he **needed** to be this cautious, but the girl had obviously tried to hide him, and maybe she was a villain who planned to dissect him later, but she’d looked about Gil’s age and his instincts said she was right. (And his hopes were saying that if the teleport part of his invention had worked, and it did, it really did! Even if it also exploded a little. Then surely the family-seeking device had worked as well, and maybe that girl was his **sister**. Or at least his cousin? Except he thought, in the dark, that she might have had green hair, which was weird. But maybe that had been a hallucinogenic aftereffect of the teleportation.)

There was no one in the hallway so he crept out, newly modified top in one hand. It looked like a dormitory, doors on either side of him and up and down across the hall as well, closed but not locked, sparsely furnished the same as the one he’d come from but almost all looked more lived-in, clothes and toys and even a couple books scattered on the floor. At least there was a bathroom at the end of the hall, even if the toilets were shaped sort of oddly. But they weren’t just holes in the rock. Wherever he was—and he was starting to think _underground_ because the walls and floor and ceiling all seemed to be made out of the same red-grey rock without any joins—at least there was plumbing.

A couple twists and turns, mostly past more bedrooms, led him to what looked like a cafeteria, with three long stone tables and a lingering scent of something sweet. Gil’s stomach grumbled and he was painfully aware that he hadn’t eaten since dinner yesterday, and barely at that. But there was an adult in the cafeteria, sweeping the floor. It was just a servant, looking pretty odd with bright orange hair and a bright blue tunic over green pants, but he was definitely in the way of any search for leftovers Gil might mount.

Gil could see a door on the opposite side, though, across from the big double doors around which he peered. He’d bet a chocolate mimmoth that led to the kitchen. Kitchens were always busy; he could almost certainly sneak some food from **there _._**

Gil grinned. Finally, time to test one of his new toys!

Calculating the trajectory carefully, he deployed the wheeled elephant from the chest. Once little more than a wooden figurine, now it glided smoothly across the floor until it ran into the table leg closest to the sweeper. The man looked up at the clunk, and a moment later, the button Gil had pushed popped back up and the elephant trumpeted out a burst of opaque black smoke.

Gil stifled a crow of delight and darted across the floor.

“Hai!”

Either Gil was still sick from the teleport or the sweeper was much more alert than he’d expected, or just had really good vision. His hand just **barely** missed catching ahold of Gil’s hair as he ran past. Gil dived sideways, under a table and the already rising smoke—he’d have to recalculate that formula. It would be much better next time!

Gil crawled along the length of the table, keeping watch for the adult’s legs. He had to make it to the kitchen door, or at least back the way he’d come—oh no, better yet, there was a big vent in the floor!

He had the grate up in a flash. There was a slight tilt to the duct, which like the halls seemed to be carved out of solid stone, hotter from the warm air rushing out of it. But there was no time to check how far it went—the sweeper was bending down at the other end of the table. Gil took a deep breath, patted his pockets to make sure all his gadgets were still in place, and slid down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, short chapters are continuing. Quick poll: Zeetha next, or cut back to Klaus freaking out?


	5. Chapter 3: Sanity Just Barely Held

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus is…concerned (on the verge of completely losing it) (losing everything.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's short and late; my brother had his appendix out so we were all sort of distracted in my house for about 24 hours. And then I reread most of a book.

It was twenty-eight hours since Klaus had last slept. That was good; with Zantabraxus’s techniques, he wouldn’t need to rest again for another three days, more with artificial stimulants. Not that he could have slept if he’d **tried** right now, with the image of Gilgamesh disappearing— **dissolving** , into a flash of light—replaying itself before his eyes every second. It obscured the machine parts spread before him and he couldn’t even take comfort from the fact that the device hadn’t exploded until Gil had almost completely “safely” away, because from what he could make out from the fried remains, his son had invented some sort of **teleport**.

Klaus started pacing again. No one else was in the laboratory, though there were guards waiting outside on his whim. He’d even sent Von Pinn away, back to the school to look after the other students. He did not want to see her broken as she had been when he found her in Mechanicsburg.

Except this _was_ her fault, a part of Klaus insisted. He had _entrusted_ Gil to her care and she had **_failed_** , in a manner **infinitely** more preventable than…whatever had happened to Castle Heterodyne six years ago. **How** had she missed the fact that Gilgamesh was breaking through? It wasn’t as if it was a **subtle** process. He ought to **break her down** **for** **spare** —

With effort and a snarling twist of his lip, Klaus cut off that trail of madness. Von Pinn was not the one who had failed here. _He_ should have paid more attention to Gilgamesh, and damn the Empire. He should have told him the truth, or put a real stop to the bullying he knew was going on in his school, or—or _**anything**_ , anything that could have meant Gil hadn’t felt so trapped and alone that he **broke the laws of physics** to get away.

(He did feel a flash of pride at that, though. What a Spark! And so young! He wondered if baby Zeetha, no more a baby now than Gilgamesh…)

He went back to staring at the mess of gears and wires that was his son’s breakthrough project. Still nothing gave a clue as to where it had sent Gil. If it **had** sent him somewhere, instead of just spreading his atoms across—no, Klaus absolutely could **_not_** let himself consider that option. **Klaus’s** breakthrough project had worked perfectly, albeit a little energetically (and also, soon enough, explosively.) Gilgamesh’s would do the same. Had **done** the same. Klaus had to believe that, or everything he planned, everything he’d done in the last seven years, would be…

Pointless. Utterly pointless.

He resumed pacing with a savage growl. He was coming at this problem from the wrong direction. Where would Gilgamesh have **wanted** to go? Because Klaus could swear one of the largest pieces of slag was some sort of targeting mechanism. He could get no further information from it because much of the **energy** of the device had been running through it, so it was a nigh unrecognizable lump of melted metal and plastic—sprinkled with residue of evaporated bloodstains, which had panicked Klaus until his frantic analysis had found evidence of no more than a cubic centimeter of lost blood. Minor accidents were always possible in an experiment with sharp tools. The point was that Gil had assuredly been aiming for a destination more specific than just “away.” **Where?** Where would a lonely, friendless orphan, caught up no doubt in Spark-fuelled paranoia and rebellion, seek shelter?

The worst possible answer occurred to Klaus, and he flung the door open so hard it nearly flew off its hinges. The guards flinched and tried to salute.

Klaus didn’t have time for that. “Get me a fast courier,” he snapped. “From Bay 17. I have business in Sturmhalten.”


	6. Chapter 4: A Twin Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adventures in the War Palace! A classroom interruption, sneaking around the vents, language lessons, and a view of Skifander.

It wasn’t that Zeetha disliked classes, math and reading and stuff. It was just **embarrassing** to be stuck back with the boys and babies, and the couple girls who hadn’t been taken for personal training yet. Unconsciously, Zeetha pushed her slim silver armbands, marking her as a a zumil, further up her triceps. She kept them polished bright, and they gleamed in the fluorescent classroom lights as her Uncle Arxus (third cousin twice removed, really) drew times tables on the board.

Zeetha was at the back of the class, so she had a good view of the things that flew out of the heating vent in the ceiling. It was a ball about the size of a head, a jumble of wires and gears and scraps of leather that looked like a complete mess until she realized none of it was getting caught in the rest of it as it spun around—was that her golden top? Zeetha had had that top since she was a baby! Her **mother** had given her that top!

…Oh no.

Zeetha was on her feet a moment before anyone else, but not before the ball began to emit the most ear-piecing squeals, just barely recognizable as the tune the top used to play. It had lit up, too; now the whole thing flashed and crackled with loose electricity, some of which leapt off the ball to dance along the floor, desks, and clothing of the closest three kids. They started shrieking as well.

Uncle Arxus, a tall, reedy man, shouted for calm and did his best to stomp on the squealing, sparking ball. It dodged under the nearest desk, still throwing off electricity and deafening screeches.

Zeetha raced to the vent, where to no surprise she found the grate missing and the boy from her bedroom staring down at her, face flushed and slightly manic. He had the **exact** same look in his eyes as Mom got when something went excitingly right in the lab.

He said something, and Zeetha had no idea what because it was too loud and she could read lips at all in Romanian—if that was what he was speaking.

“What?” she demanded in Skiff. “No, never mind, go away! Go away!” She said it the second time in Romanian, waving her arms for emphasis, hoping he’d get het message. She glanced over her shoulder; everyone else was crying, trying to brush sparks off their clothes—or to catch them in midair—or chasing down the still-screaming ball. But it was only a matter of time before someone saw her. Saw **him**.

The boy’s—her twin’s?—eyes widened in understanding, and he somehow scrambled back up the vent by about the length of his body. But then he stopped, unhooked something from his belt, and dropped it down toward Zeetha. It uncoiled into a thin but tough-looking rope, made mostly from what looked like Zeetha’s own clothing torn to shreds. While she started to get annoyed, the boy made impatient gestures that clearly translated to _come on_.

Zeetha looked back again. Uncle Arxus and all the students were now crouched around Tarini’s desk, trying to coach the device out. The sparks seemed to have faded, though it was still emitting piercing wails.

Then Zedmara looked up and met Zeetha’s eyes from across the room. Her gaze took in the rope hanging from the went as well, and her mouth started to shape a question.

Well, it was too late to remain **completely** secret now. Zeetha shot her cousin (first cousin, one year younger, one of her best friends) a quelling gaze, along with a head shake, a finger to her lips, and a squint that she hoped would be interpreted as “I’ll tell you later.” Though she wasn’t sure she would, really; Zedmara was many things but “good at keeping a secret” wasn’t one of them.

Then Zeetha eschewed the makeshift rope to jump onto the nearest desk and up into the heating vent after her maybe-possibly twin brother.

The vent went directly up, but it was skinny enough that Zeetha had no trouble bracing herself against the sides. At least she was facing the right direction—the boy was upside-down, face red with all the blood rushing to it.

“Are you my sister?” he hissed in Romanian, instead of moving up like a sensible person.

From this close and right under him, Zeetha could see that his canines were slightly fangy, though not nearly long or sharp enough to be proper adult teeth. “Maybe. Go!”

He went, and conversation lulled while they inched their way up to the first junction with a large enough horizontal shaft to slide into. The boy was still backwards, and trying to hide how hard he was breathing. He wasn’t very good at it.

“What’s your name?” he asked. Somehow, he wiggled around enough to pull a small green-glowing stone from one pocket. Zeetha had no idea how nothing had fallen out of those when he was upside-down.

“Zeetha, daughter of Chump.” It was custom to introduce oneself with the name of one’s mother, but Zeetha, in stubborn refusal to be ashamed, had always used her father’s given name. Now she waited with bated breath.

The boy’s face fell. “Oh. I’m Gilgamesh Holz—Gil. Call me Gil.”

He didn’t recognize it. Zeetha felt her heart plummet as well, but she tried again. “’Chump’ not true name, of father. My father.” She tried to remember everything her mother had ever taught her of Romanian. “My mother no—never?—speak true name of his. She is, continues, angry and sad he leave and he take my…brother.”

Gil’s lips parted hopefully again, and she added helpfully, “The name of my mother is Zantabraxus, War Queen of Skifander.”

Gil whispered something unknown in Romanian, eyes as round as a small buckle shield.

“Wah-ow?” Zeetha repeated.

“Wow,” he said more firmly. “It means…” He kept going in Romanian for a while, in which Zeetha only understood a couple words, until he simplified it to, “’Wow’ is, ‘I think that is very very good!’”

Zeetha grinned, flashing her own, just recently grown-in adult fangs. “Wow, good! Skiff speak ‘shaa.’” She widened her eyes and tried to look impressed to get the meaning across.

“Shaaa,” Gil repeated. He held the breath too long, but it was close enough.

“Good!”

Gil grinned back at her, and she could tell they were both on the verge of giggling. So this was what having a twin (probably, maybe) was like! It was **fun**. Grandmother and everyone else were stupid.

But now that the blood had stopped rushing to his upside-down face, Gil had gone back to being so pale he almost shone in the dim light of his glowstone, and she was pretty sure the pallor wasn’t just because the light itself was sickly. And he was still panting a little.

Zeetha touched his shoulder. “You are not good. Not…strong.”

 _Healthy_ , she wanted to say, and that **was** part of a lot of old stories about twins, that one would be well and the other sickly and it was a sign that the sickly one must die before they started to steal the life from the strong, rightful soul and body. Zeetha didn’t believe those stories, but she knew them. She’d seen her mother looking sick after an experiment gone wrong, and Gil was definitely a Gifted who’d just done something really amazing and foolish.

He wasn’t even denying that he was sick, which, if Zeetha new Gifteds, meant it was really bad.

“You need safe and sleep,” she said, pushing him gently. “I…know a place. Light?”

She held out her hand and he passed it over. She started backing up. Children weren’t really supposed to crawl around the heating vents—neither were adults, she supposed, but the only one who could fit was Aunt Zexnia who was skinny as a stick and barely a head taller than Zeetha herself. But everyone did, and didn’t get in trouble so long as they weren’t caught. And the vents ran all the way through the cliff palace, keeping the old stone warm. A sufficiently small, wiggly, and curious child could go almost anywhere.

Zeetha had **never** been caught.

It seemed like ages before they got to her secret lookout spot, though according to Gil’s timepiece is was only about half an hour. So much for her getting back without being missed, either. They had to stop twice so Gil could catch his breath between unavoidable long passages of straight up. He really didn’t look well; it made Zeetha nervous. She wished her mother were home. There were other people she trusted with the knowledge and safety of her twin, but not many, or as much. And the War Queen would know what to **do _._**

But the look on Gil’s face as he stared out at the hidden canyon of Skifander made everything worth it, somehow. It wasn’t the highest window in the War Palace cliff, nor the farthest down the valley. But it was definitely in the corner, and there was room three small or two big people to sit on the broad red-grey stone ledge and look down and to the left at most of the length of the canyon.

It was nearly midday so there was plenty of sun, touching briefly on the bottom of the War cliff before settling onto the begreened banks hewn from the cliffs, and onto the rushing River Skiff itself. Sunbeams turned the raging spring whitecaps as blinding as snow and brought out brilliant rainbows in the mist at the head of the canyon, where the Great Waterfall fell from the Mouth of Ashtara. Around the Mouth sat the High Priestess’s temple, the only visibly human-carved cliff face in Skifander, sculpted in the image of the goddess herself. The River, said the stories, was her words given form, mighty and dangerous but also life-giving and at times even gentle. On bright days like this, Zeetha could believe it.

And straight ahead the Civic Palace cliff towered, reaching up and out over their heads just as the War cliff did, until the two nearly met. Here at the end of the canyon, they weren’t even a quarter of kilometer apart. Twinkling mirrors in the both cliffs, barely noticeable from above but, Zeetha knew, dazzlingly bright on the ground, sent light bouncing back and forth across the water, bringing maximum light and warmth to the crops growing on the banks. The Civic palace had more obvious openings in the cliff than the War Palace; Gil pointed excitedly at a one-woman flier that slipped out of one of the big bays and swooped across to somewhere below and to the left of their seat. Zeetha wondered what he would think of the ziplines scattered throughout the canyon, officially for emergencies but really for the adventuresome to prove her daring by just grabbing ahold of a glider (all right, and strapping into a harness) and simply sliding from one cliff to the other, so fast that the wind made her eyes tear up and the mist (if she was low enough to the River or close enough to the Falls) hit her bare skin like knives. Zeetha had first ridden a zipline when she was six and loved every second.

Gil gaped as he breathed a silent “wow,” and then, with a slight smile, “Shaa.” Zeetha smirked and added ziplines to her swiftly growing mental list of things to do with her twin.

But less exciting things had to come first, while he was still weak and potentially in danger from temple assassins. It wasn’t likely, but it was a possibility.

“You need sleep. To sleep,” she reminded him, pulling him back from the window. The way he stumbled off the ledge said she was entirely right, though he muttered something in Romanian in which she only caught the word “not.”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “Sit. Sleep. Be more strong, ah, later.”

Gil grumbled some more, but settled down on the floor. The space was about twice as long as the window ledge and half again as wide, before it ran into the jumble of smaller rocks that marked where a hallway had caved in and never been excavated. That was rare in the Palace; secret rooms like this were to be treasured.

“Why do I need to _hide?_ ” he asked plaintively. Zeetha appreciated that he was **trying** to keep his words simple. “You’re—you are my sister, yes? Where is Zana…Zanabrac…the War Queen?”

“’Zantabraxus,’” Zeetha corrected. “She is away. She works.” She did not want want to explain the twin thing. She didn’t know _how_ to explain the twin thing, in a different language. “You stay, safe here, for danger. Bad…they kill? Maybe?”

This was ridiculous. She needed her mother just to **speak** to him. Did anyone else know Romanian? Uncle Nod, probably; maybe Aunt Zemare too. Unfortunately, Chump had mostly learned to speak Skiff when he was here, rather than teaching anyone his tongue.

At least Gil looked suitably daunted. Well, no, actually, his jaw set with a mulish determination that Zeetha recognized as a Gifted thinking “just let them **try**.” But then he ruined it by yawning, so she thought she might have won this round.

“Stay,” she said firmly. “Be quiet. I come later and food…” I will bring? Have? She didn’t know how to _say_ those!

Gil seemed to understand, though. “Thank you,” He lay back on the rock, hands under his head for a pillow, and looked up at her with something like the same awe with which he’d ogled Skifander. “I…am happy that you are my sister. If you are. I don't…I do not know my parents, but I am happy that I _found_ you.”

“ _’Found’_?” she repeated curiously.

“Yes. Um…I did not know where you were, or if you even **existed** , and now I do. ‘Found.’”

“Oh, ‘found’!” She crouched and rested a hand on his arm. “Skiff ‘found’ is _tapa_. Mor tapa ama kreen.” _I found my twin._ She used the old word for “twin”, the one that wasn’t an insult and was usually only used in old stories like Gilmesh and Nikidu.

“Kreen,” he repeated with a sappy smile. “Tapa kreen.” His accent was horrible and he slurred the words like he was about to fall asleep. That, at least, Zeetha approved of. She wondered if she should empty his pockets again, but no, there was no way for her to get it all back through the vents. And how would she explain the stuff if someone caught her?

“I come later,” she promised again. “ **Stay**.”

She waited until he nodded understanding, then darted back into the vent in the corner. She had about fifteen minutes of sneaking In which to think up a story for Zedmara and, worse, any adults who started asking questions.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarification on Skiff word for "twin": I'm imagining it's taboo enough that the non-perjorative form, "kreen", is almost never used, because if someone's twin is still alive they're called "notwan", half-souled, and if their twin is ("properly") dead, they just aren't regarded as a twin anymore.
> 
> I'm still getting inspiration for my Skifander headcanons - location, language, family, etc. - from Han502653, though not following her versions exactly so don't get fussy at differences. And do go read her fic, "In Which Zeetha Was Sicker than she Thought."


	7. Chapter 5: A Conjecture and a Devil's Bargain Made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus comes to a false - but, in fairness, not altogether illogical - conclusion, followed by a correct, even more stressful one. Concurrently, Tarvek leaps to a correct conclusion almost entirely unsupported by facts, and acts on a whim for perhaps the first time in his life. (Gil was a good influence.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that I retconned a bit into Chapter 3, so traces of Gil's blood were on the targeting part of his teleport. That's the problem with making plot up as I go, sorry.

Tarvek was sitting quietly in the corner, watching his father autopsy the last failed trial of the Geisterdamen’s summoning engine, when the news came that a Wulfenbach courier ship was approaching. For a moment his heart leapt as he imagined that the Baron had decided expulsion was too harsh a punishment, or at least that he really needed a hostage from Sturmhalten, and Tarvek was about to be taken back to Castle Wulfenbach. He could attend classes, explore with Gil (more subtly this time), and only be on guard and acting dumb about half the time, rather than all of it. Of course he’d have to be subservient with the **Baron** , much more so than before, but he could handle that if it meant—

Tarvek reined himself in, careful not to let the flicker of hope show on his face. It was almost certainly just a routine demand, if unexpected and probably unpleasant. Much like the Wulfenbach Empire itself, according to most of Tarvek’s relatives. Including his father, who dismissed the messenger with a growl and returned to his work. Tarvek watched over his shoulder.

Fifteen minutes later, the servant returned to inform them that it was the Baron **himself** flying by fast courier directly for Sturmhalten. Prince Aaronev sprang up with a bellow.

“ ** _Klaus!_** What could **he** —” He stood in front of the slab as if to shield its contents from the Baron. His mad eyes darted around the room, seeking out spies. The servant cowered by the door. The prince’s gaze fell on Tarvek. “You! Boy! What have you done now? Did you **leave** something on that blasted airship?”

Tarvek barely noticed his father’s degrading tone; he was in the madness place, it was acceptable. And he was too busy scrambling through his own mind for an answer. “Nothing! I—I swear, Father, I don’t know why he could be here!”

(Unless, the tiniest part of him suggested, it **was** to take him back. He was a pretty valuable hostage, wasn’t he; it made sense for the Baron to pick him up personally. And what else could it be? If Wulfenbach had discovered the Knights of Jove or, worse, the things being built in the Sturmhalten chapel and the caverns below, he would have come with an entire fleet, not a single courier ship...)

“Are we—you, um, going to meet with him?” Tarvek asked. His father had to, really; Tarvek only hoped he’d come out of the madness place first. That could be _really_ disastrous.

“Of **course** ,” his father said. He was already tearing off his bloodstained lab coat. “How much longer until he arrives?”

The servant shrank, if possible, further in on herself. “About ten minutes, your highness.”

Prince Aaronev snarled, but the harmonics in it were starting to fade. He glanced back frustratedly at the slim corpse on the slab. “Fetch my purple coat and some clean gloves. I’ll see him in the Blue Sitting Room. Tarvek, you stay out of sight.”

-

The Baron entered the room like a storm cloud, hair wild in the classic madboy shock and thunder promised in his scowl. But his voice was calm, if cold, as it cut through the prince’s attempted greeting. “Aaronev. I’m looking for a student of mine, a boy named Gilgamesh Holzfaller. I have reason to believe he might have come here.”

Tarvek gaped. Gil? Here? Why would Gil have come here, and  _how?_

He was standing on a stool so he could see through one of the peepholes in the not-quite-solid wall around the fireplace. “Stay out of sight” was almost as good as “listen but don’t get caught”, particularly in his family. Anevka would have been right beside him if she weren’t spending the weekend with Seffie. 

Tarvek’s father was just as bemused. “A boy? Klaus, what is the meaning of this?”

Wulfenbach ignored the question, even though Prince Aaronev should have “properly” addressed him as “Herr Baron.” Though **he** wasn’t being formal either.

“He’s about 140 centimeters tall, skinny, with brown hair,” the Baron persisted. “You’ll almost certainly have noticed **something** —he’s, ah, in breakthrough.”

Tarvek’s eyes widened further. Breakthrough! He’d figured Gil was probably a spark, but he was a couple months younger than Tarvek himself. That was an almost **unprecedented** age at which to break through.

That must be how the Baron thought he’d ended up In Sturmhalten, too—Gil must have escaped Castle Wulfenbach! And…come looking for Tarvek? Except he hadn’t. They’d never made up after the discovery in the vault; Gil hadn’t even spoken when Tarvek said he was going to find out the truth about his family—because that sausagemaker story was ridiculous, really, it **had** to be a lie. But the Baron, like Tarvek, had overestimated their friendship.

Tarvek’s father denied seeing anything of that sort, which was true—the secrets they were keeping from the Baron were nothing like a wayward eight-year-old spark.

“You’re **certain** your people would have reported anything?” the Baron demanded. His scowl was still in place and his voice was still cool, but there was a growing tightness to it as well, just a shiver. Something about the set of his shoulders suggested he might break into violent action at any moment. It reminded Tarvek of something, niggling at the edge of his mind.

“Absolutely,” Tarvek’s father said smoothly. “The people of Sturmhalten are very loyal—and a Spark in breakthrough, well, how could someone conceal **that**?” That was the politic place to stop; his curiosity must have gotten the better of him because he added, “How **did** the boy get away, Klaus?”

“It’s not of your concern,” Wulfenbach snapped, eyes darting sideways, and Tarvek’s breath caught in his throat because the Baron was acting **exactly** like Gil when he was hiding something—something important, like fear or weakness, not just a new secret passageway. The tautness in his voice, the set of his shoulders, the way he clearly didn’t want to make eye contact—the Baron was much better at acting normal, looked Tarvek’s father in the eye anyway and everything, but Gil did that too, when he was so desperate to change the subject that he started getting angry. The old stone hallway was chill and silent at Tarvek’s back, but he might as well have been in the nook in the girders near the roaring Castle Wulfenbach engines where Gil retreated when the other students were being particularly awful. Next, if he weren’t in an official setting, the Baron would be turning away and tugging on his messy forelocks in a clumsy attempt to hide his face while just seeming frustrated.

…His messy forelocks that were **just** like the Gil’s, the classic frayed madboy look.

And Gil was a Spark, an even stronger one than Tarvek would have thought. Practically **conquer Europa _-_** strong, if he really broke through at age eight then escaped from **Castle Wulfenbach _._** (Tarvek felt a spike of regret for how much they could have **done** together. But maybe there was still hope…)

Unless his guess was right.

“I’d like to speak to your son,” the Baron said stiffly while Tarvek was busy leaping to conclusions.

“Tarvek?” asked his father. “What for?”

Wulfenbach glowered. “He knew the boy.”

“Very well. I believe he’s in his room. I’ll send a man—” The prince gestured towards one of the guards at the door.

“Don’t be fatuous,” said the Baron. “He’s listening from behind that patch of ‘brick’ by your fireplace.” And he strode around the prince and yanked the partition back, revealing Tarvek like a bloodbat in sunlight. Tarvek didn’t need to fake falling off the stool, but the Baron caught his arm with a grip like an extra strength biolab manacle before he could stumble further back.

“Wulfenbach!” Prince Aaronev sputtered with indignation. “What do you think you are **doing?** ”

“Being efficient,” replied the Baron. He pulled Tarvek into the center of the room. “I **do** have other matter demanding my attention, Aaronev. Please give us the room.”

It was polite but it wasn’t a request. Nor was it remotely proper, not in the Prince’s own castle, but Tarvek’s father only thinned his lips and acquiesced, motioning the guards out ahead of him. He stopped at the door to frown warningly at the Baron, though Tarvek didn’t miss the lip curl meant for himself as well. _Don’t reveal anything important._

Then he walked out, closing the door and leaving Tarvek alone with Baron Wulfenbach.

Tarvek stared at the Baron, suspicion chasing astonishment chasing abject terror around his mind. Companion of the Heterodyne Boys but enemy of the Lady Lucrezia, upstart (successful) conqueror of most of the Storm King’s—Tarvek’s—old, rightful empire...and just possibly the father of Tarvek’s (best) (only) friend. Except that was absurd. Wasn’t it? It was absurd to think that Gil might be the **Baron’s** son, but it wasn’t so impossible that Baron Wulfenbach, if he had any children, might hide their existence from a threatening Europa, at least until they were old enough to defend themselves. He’d probably do a lot to keep that secret. It was strange that he wouldn’t tell **Gil** , when all Gil wanted was to know that truth, but then, Tarvek had never heard of the Baron being a nice person.

Except now, for the first time, he felt a shiver of personal anger about it.

“Sit down,” said the Baron, finally letting go of his arm. Tarvek sat. The Baron clasped his hands behind his back and paced for a moment, while Tarvek clutched the arms of his chair and searched the Baron's face and body for signs of Gil. He could almost see it, if Gil was older, grumpier, and much more intimidating. Or was he just imagining it? He couldn’t let himself be mistaken about this. It was the highest stakes he’d ever played for.

“You were friends with Gilgamesh,” the Baron said abruptly, looking as if the words tasted sour in his mouth. “Did you have any impression that this was coming on?”

“That he was going to break through?” There was no point in pretending he hadn’t been listening earlier. “No. Of course not. That’s impossible. It’s practically unprecedented, to break through so early. I though he might be a Spark one day, of course, but—” Tarvek bit his tongue to keep himself from babbling. Nerves, it was just nerves. And oh no, the Baron was frowning; he shouldn’t have admitted to suspecting Gil was a Spark—if the Baron was trying to keep his heritage secret, he’d probably want to keep the strength of his spark quiet as well. Had Tarvek betrayed himself?

“Did he ever talk about leaving the Castle?” the Baron demanded.

Yes, all the time, wistfully and sometimes desperately. Whether the Baron was Gil’s father or just the conqueror of Europa, Tarvek couldn’t keep the accusation out of his voice when he answered. “Yes, especially when the other kids were mean to him.”

Was that a flicker of **guilt** in the Baron’s intense grey eyes? Tarvek wasn’t even sure how to comprehend that.

He’d never thought Gil would _actually_ try to leave the Castle anyway. He’d often hated the school, or the other students at least, but Tarvek had never seen him happier than when he was exploring the vents or showing off new hidden nooks in the ever-growing maze of walls and crossbeams. Gil loved Castle Wulfenbach.

“Where did he plan to **go? _”_**

Tarvek desperately wanted to know the same thing. “Nowhere. Anywhere.” A thought struck. “To find his family, I bet.” And he couldn’t **help** but give the Baron an extra measuring gaze.

Wulfenbach didn’t seem to notice. He’d gone pale, fists clenched, and silently mouthed, “Blood **in** the— _no_.” (Tarvek had learned to read lips almost before words.)

The Baron strode over to the door and slammed it open, making the trio of guards jump.

“You,” he snapped, pointing to one at random. “Go tell Aar—tell the prince that I’m done and I’m leaving. I don’t really care if he bids me farewell.” He started stalking down the corridor before the man could finish gasping.

Tarvek scrambled after him, shooing the guards away. “Herr Baron! Wha-where are you going?”

“ ** _After Gilgamesh_.** ” There was a sparky rumble of thunder in his growl. He didn’t slow his pace as he glanced down at Tarvek, who was practically jogging to keep up, but he added slightly less intently, “Your answers were helpful. Go tell your father that I’m leaving.”

“Let me come too!”

Tarvek almost stopped moving in surprise at his own words. Of course he wanted to help Gil, and he really didn’t want to stay at home—but go somewhere with the **Baron?**

Of course, half an hour ago he’d been dreaming of just that.

The Baron didn’t hesitate either. “Absolutely not.” He wasn’t angry so much as dismissive. “Go back—”

Something in Tarvek **_snapped_** _._ He had been **patient**. He had been **quiet**. He had watched and waited and acted meek, and as a result he knew things that could send Europa hurtling into a second Long War if handled correctly. But nobody **respected** him. His father ordered him about as if he were an imbecile. Gil wouldn’t talk to him or come to him or even consider that he might be **right** about something so _obviously_ false as the sausage Spark story. He’d thought, for a moment, that the Baron must have sent him home because he didn’t want Tarvek discovering the truth of Gil’s ancestry—that he actually considered him a **threat** —but here he was dismissing him again without even a nod. When Tarvek had actually **figured it out** , when before the exile had been completely **unfair** and **unfounded!** But no—back to home, to friendless hallways and awful secrets and sitting quietly in a corner and **watching** while everybody else went out and _did_ things—made social connections and learned about philosophy and art and got into trouble, fun trouble and **real** trouble, like escaping from the most secure flying fortress in the world and **going** **_missing_**.

Mind and heart aflame, he raced ahead to turn around and plant himself in front of the Baron, fists at his sides and feet shoulder-width apart, just like in training, ready to dodge of deliver a blow. Eight years in Society gave straightness to his shoulders and centuries of direct descendants of Andronicus Valois brought a proud jut to his chin.

“Absolutely _**yes**_ ,” he hissed, eyes flashing. “I can **help**. Or you can leave me here, and I’ll tell my father who Gil’s father _**really**_ is.”

Baron Wulfenbach actually stopped mid-stride. He looked around sharply: there was no one close enough to overhear. His eyebrows furrowed even more deeply, but the aggressive light faded a little from his eyes and he met Tarvek’s glare almost thoughtfully. Tarvek got the distinct impression he was being held in judgment, on a hundred different scales at once.

He straightened his glasses, crossed his arms, and refused to look away.

The Baron nodded, breaking the stalemate. “Very well. We leave at once.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cute roadtrip montage*


	8. Chapter 6: New Acquaintances Acquired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gil acquires new minions - er, friends. Cousins, to be exact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I, um, got distracted by Brandon Sanderson books for a while. It was very fun and I didn't sleep much. But this time when I say I'll be updating weekly, I really do mean it!
> 
> Also I'm stealing characters from the glorious Han502653, and doing my own things with them so don't consider this canon for her stuff.

Gil had been keeping alert for assassins, he really had. He’d started out by the corner of the window, so he could keep an eye on that opening as well as the vent at the far end of the little room. He even worked on the floor and kept his phosphorestone low, so no one in the cliff across the way could see the glow. But the ledge made just too good a lab bench, even if all he had for laboratory materials was the stuff in his pockets plus the odds and ends from Zeetha’s room. And he _really_ needed more light, so he loosened the seal on his vial of phosphorous dust, letting oxygen creep in and react in a blaze of light, and propped it up in the cup Zeetha had left him when she brought dinner. It was tin, so it hid the light pretty well, and he could even turn it on its side and spin it to direct the rays. Only _then_ did he set about converting his handheld blowtorch into a force field generator, which was tricky because he really needed the blowtorch for some of the finer alterations. Also, he wasn’t quite sure how to make a force field. But that was what experimentation was for!

So he was distracted, and didn’t notice there was someone else in the room until they leaned over his shoulder and said something incomprehensible in what sounded like Skiff.

He yelped and spun around, nearly hitting her with the blowtorch—which wasn’t spitting flame anymore, but wasn’t generating much of a force field either. A few blue sparks flew from the end, matching the cerulean of her hair. Didn’t anyone have normal hair in this place?

She jumped back, anyway, then lunged forward again to grab his wrist and twist it until he nearly dropped the torch. “Nik tok!” she hissed, though little fangs just like Zeetha’s. “Nik tok!”

“Ow!” Gil cried, and tried to kick her shins. She dodged. “Lemme _go!_ Ow!” His shoulder was halfway out of its _socket_.

An older boy, nearly a head taller than Gil with darker blue hair and a crooked nose, grabbed both their arms and towed them both away from the makeshift lab bench, saying something in Skiff. When the girl let go of Gil’s wrist with a scowl, the older boy grabbed the not-really-a-blowtorch-anymore from his hand.

Gil darted back towards his tools on the ledge, and the girl tackled him around the waist and pinned him hard to the floor, arm twisted behind his back.

“ ** _Let me go!_** ” he demanded, sparky fury slightly muffled by having his face pushed against the rocky floor. “Get off _right now_ or you’re gonna **_rue_** _the day—”_

They didn’t even pay attention to him, just jabbered away in Skiff, which gave Gil a moment to calm down. They probably weren’t assassins; he wasn’t dead yet and even the boy looked like he wasn’t even a teenager yet. _Kids_ couldn’t be assassins.

The girl (he was pinned by a _girl_ , ugh, who wasn’t even bigger than him) said something imperious and Gil seized on the only word he recognized.

“Zeetha!” he called. “I know Zeetha! She said it was okay to stay here.” He thought he might have seen this girl in Zeetha’s classroom earlier—hopefully they were friends. “I’m her  _kreen_.” 

The boy gasped, and the girl said something that Gil had no trouble translating as “I knew it!”

He wiggled his arm hopefully and raised his face from the rock. “Yes,  _kreen_." He thought it probably meant 'brother.' " _Tapa kreen._ Um, let me up?”

The girl let go of his arm and got off his legs. Gil sat up, rubbing his shoulder, to find two sets of bright golden eyes staring at him, wide with curiosity. They looked _really_ alike—siblings, maybe?

“Do you speak Romanian?”

Blank stares. The girl glanced at her brother and said something scornful, in which Gil could only pick out the word “Skiff.”

“No, I don’t speak Skiff!” Gil replied hotly. He gestured to his mouth and ears, then shook his head. They needed Zeetha, or better yet some sort of mechanized translator. How could he build a clank that spoke both languages, though when he only knew one? It was a paradox.

The girl crossed her arms, frowning. It was really annoying, because she looked about seven years old. How _dare_ —no, that wasn’t the problem right now. He’d show her some _other_ time.

The older boy was turning the would-be force field generator over in his hands, peering at the modified nozzle. Gil had been trying to get it to disperse a gas that would solidify upon contact with the air—though he hadn’t actually figured out how to do _that_ yet. A couple experiments were bubbling behind him on the ledge.

The blue-haired boy asked something, an excited hum in his voice. Oh, so they did have Sparks here! Gil grinned. “Yeah, that’s mine!”

The other boy started to say something in Skiff, then he shook his head, gesturing at his mouth. “No baken Romanin.” He kept talking for a moment, then paused, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Mmm…koma Zantabraxias dol…”

The girl’s eyes widened. “Zed, ba!” But she seemed more delighted than horrified.

“Kar!” he replied, eyes alight. He grabbed Gil’s arm again and began owing him towards the vent passage, speaking excitedly in Skiff.

“Wait!” Gil cried, and pulled himself loose to dash back to his makeshift lab bench and throw everything he could into his pockets. “Where are we going? Zeetha said Zantabraxus wasn’t here. Does she have a translator? A clank? Some sort of writing device? Or a psychic information dump, that could work too. Or is there just someone else who speaks Romanian?” He hesitated for a moment at that, hand on the double-ended bastard file he’d just tucked up one sleeve. These two seemed trustworthy, but Zeetha had given him the distinct impression he didn’t want to be found here, by adults at least. But nothing tested, nothing discovered! And this (quite sharp) file was the _least_ of his possible weapons.

He batted the girl’s hands away from his jar of phosphorus dust and closed it himself, then wrapped it in some shreds of cloth to muffle the glow, which was pretty bright even when he tucked it in his thick-clothed left hip pocket. “All right, let’s go!”

She rolled her eyes, but led the way into the vent. It was harder to see now, but the boy had brought out a glowing stone of his own to examine the force field generator. It looked like it had some sort of rune on it.

“What’s your guys’ names by the way?” Gil whispered as they started to edge down the shaft. “I’m Gil.” He tapped his chest. “Gil. Me. Gil.”

“Zed,” whispered the boy from behind. “Mor Zed.” He pointed over past Gil’s shoulder at the girl. “Zedmara.”

“Shaa,” Gil breathed back, which was probably too much but it was the only remotely appropriate Skiff response he knew. Wherever they were going, he _needed_ to make a translator.


	9. Chapter 7: An Experiment Embarked Upon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People disappear and are found again, science is done, Skifandrian science/magic hinted at but not explained (don’t worry, I’ve overthought it and will definitely get there), and maybe people get in trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's starting to get confusing so clarification (and I'm going to go retroactively bring all the other chapters to the same formatting rules):  
> \- bold is always for emphasis, in narration and dialogue  
> \- italics in dialogue are words said in another language which the POV-focus character doesn't understand  
> \- a character speaking in the POV's non-native tongue but with words the POV understands will not be italicized, and you have to figure out from context/who they are what language they're speaking  
> \- italics in narration are specific thoughts the POV character is having or hearing (it'll make sense when it happens)
> 
> If you spot something that doesn't fit these rules - or see any other typo - feel free to leave a comment and I'll fix it!
> 
> Reminder that many of the Skifandrian cultural details and OCs are stolen-with-permission (then modified to suit my whims) from Han502653, who is great. And the makeshift translation devices the kids come up with are influenced by Askerian's Homestuck epic Battlefield Terra, though I didn't realize it until I was actually writing them.

Zeetha knew about heart failure. There was the literal kind where, due to old age or some tragic flaw, the organ gave out, and there was the figurative kind, when a warrior’s spirit simply broke in the face of great fear, in battle or on the edge of a cliff or staring down one of the human-sized spiders that roamed the mountains to the west. She hadn’t realized the two were so closely related, or that such fear could result from something as simple as finding an empty room with a couple loose screws and chemical splashes on the floor where one had expected to see a boy.

She put a hand over her chest as if that could still the pounding. This was dumb. Just because her first thought was  _Temple assassins_ didn’t mean it was the **smartest** thought. How would they know? How would they **possibly** know? Of course, she didn’t know how many other people had seen Gil, but there was no reason to take him silently in the night if they didn’t know who he was. And he didn’t look **that** much like her or Mom.

Probably they’d been discovered by someone in the War Palace, and the only reason she hadn’t been woken up for a scolding and demanded explanation was that they’d only just got Gil, and missed Zeetha when she snuck out of her room early to grab something from the kitchens and bring it here before training. She knew no one had believed her excuses for disappearing yesterday. Even though they’d been mostly true! She **had** seen someone throw the screaming top-ball into the classroom, and she **had** given chase. And she had **not** made it herself, nor the similar thing that had “mysteriously” spread smoke all through the cafeteria earlier, which Aunt Zemia seemed concerned about.

It was a sign of how upset people were about Gil’s stuff that Aunt Zemia was asking the questions herself. She was the official Chief of Intelligence and unofficial Chief of Palace Security, and when she got involved you **knew** you were in trouble. Under the circumstances, and Zemia’s fierce stare, Zeetha thought she had done **really well** at holding up her story.

She realized she was shredding the thick, warm bread to crumbs as she thought, and stopped her nervous fingers. Maybe it was for the best that Gil was found. They would no doubt call the War Queen home, because Aunt Zemare liked politics even less than Zeetha’s mom and wouldn’t want to deal with the royal notw—kreen herself. Zeetha could relate. And then Zeetha could explain everything…

She rushed back through the vents, bread abandoned in the lookout room. Gil might be scared, or worse, getting all Gifted-righteous and get them in even more trouble. If there was trouble to be gotten into, Zeetha was determined to be getting into it right along with her twin.

The bell rang for morning training when she was nearly back at her borrowed bedroom, and she hesitated a moment before turning around and heading to the practice courts instead. People would probably be looking for her by now anyway, and if she was determined to turn herself in with Gil, she might as well do it in public.

(And if it **was** assassins, like it had been when they were babies, she would raise the **whole War family _._** )

She wasn’t even late. Aunts Kandra and Fabi were leading exercises this morning, and Fabi’s zumil Neta. Zeetha marched up to them boldly, ready to be shouted at and sent to wherever Gil was being kept.

But the warriors barely spared her a second glance. Kandra only looked up from a toddler’s skimmed knee long enough to tell her to sit down and get started stretching. Befuddled, Zeetha obeyed, though she caught Zedmara making “I have to tell you something” faces at her from across the room. But then it was sprints, and core exercises, and it wasn’t until the cool-down jog that Zeetha got a chance to slip in beside her cousin.

“What do you know?” she demanded without preamble.

“Your…brother is in your kolee’s lab,” Zedmara whispered back, hiding their conversation in the general patter of feet around the indoor courtyard. “I fell asleep after a while, but they were still messing with stuff when I came down. How did he **get** here?”

They? But her kolee wasn’t home—“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Zed and Gil. Zeetha, why is he here?” she repeated. “And how? How long has he been here? I thought he was missing!”

“Not since yesterday,” Zeetha replied. “And I don’t know, he has a really strong Gift I think. **Why** did you take him to Mom’s lab?”

“It was Zed’s idea. They’re both totally lost in the Gift.” She looked satisfied for a moment. “Zed is going to get in so much trouble with Mama for missing training.”

“So are you,” Zeetha hissed, “for helping him take Gil to the War Queen’s laboratory!”

Visions of everything that could go wrong flashed unwanted through her mind, starting with crippling explosions and getting worse from there. Zed knew his way around the lab pretty well, because he’d only gotten the Gift half a year ago but everyone had predicted it since before Zemare took him as zumil, so Zantabraxus had often let him help with less dangerous experiments. But there was plenty of **very** dangerous stuff in there. Even Zedmara, who generally cared about getting into trouble even less than Zeetha, blanched at the thought.

“Break to get water!” Aunt Fabi called out.

The girls slowed to a walk, hanging back from the crowd of younger children thronging around the water fountain.

“You need to cover me,” Zeetha whispered to her cousin. “Five minutes head start at least.”

Zedmara nodded, a mischievous light in her eyes. “Easy.”

“Thanks.”

Zeetha started to sidle away, but Zedmara grabbed her arm.

“My mom really will be on a warpath,” she warned. “Zed should’ve met her for training an hour ago, and this is the fourth time in a month that he’s missed.”

“So she’ll be angry with him,” Zeetha reasoned, “and not me. Or Gil.”

Zedmara looked doubtful, but let her go. Zeetha waited until she had started a water-flicking fight between half the little kids before slipping out of the room.

It was harder than before to sneak through the palace. She went into the vents again, but there were guards by every other grate, and new motion sensors that she nearly tripped three times.

Luckily, her mother was very keen on secret passages, even more so than the ancestresses who had built the War Palace. Zeetha had never been really interested in heirographics or science, but she _did_ know all three hidden entrances to her mother’s lab, deep in the cliff where no smoke could escape to be seen outside the Valley. Even the extra dangerous one that used the waste tunnel down to the magma vents!

Today there was a princess warrior standing guard on both the main and secret staircases, so she used the _extra_ secret passageway, which was really just a slide that stopped not-quite-gently at a glyph-locked stone door. Zeetha had scraped her knee on the way down; she used two fingers to smear her blood along the slashes of the carven sigil. It shone for a moment as the Goddess accepted her offering. The stone ground sideways just enough to let her slip into the laboratory.

Nothing seemed to have exploded. That was good. At least, there were no new scorch marks on the walls that she could see. There was stuff scattered all around the floor and tables, though, like when Mom was in the middle of a big project and couldn’t be bothered to pick up. Most of the ready-made glyph-stones were scattered across the floor, and the big zappy gravity thing the Queen had been working on before she left looked like it had been turned upside-down, though possibly it was meant to do that. Some parts were sticking out, which she was pretty sure was new. And there **was** a small fire in one corner, but it was the forge area and Zed was holding something in a jar over it, his dark hair tied back away from the flame, so that was fine.

Gil was sitting on a bench to her right, or more accurately sprawled across it, surrounded by the contents of his pockets and several odd contraptions and scraps of metal. She breathed a little easier to see him in one piece. He still looked too pale, but he was snoring faintly, which was _definitely_ fine. Zed’s kolee was teaching him the not-sleeping trick, but not Gil.

Zed turned around then, and saw her looking around the lab. Zeetha started to put a finger to her lips but her idiot cousin grinned and shouted, “Zeetha! Gil, Zeetha’s here!”

She lunged forward in time to catch her idiot **brother** before he rolled off the bench onto a variety of pointy objects. “Hai! Careful!”

Gil blinked at her blearily as she helped him back onto the bench. “Huh?” He pushed messy bangs out of his eyes, revealing a warrior’s circlet, a thunjahot, on his brow. Wires she hadn’t noticed before were sticking out above his ears, from metal things attached to the band.

Then the Goddess’s Gift came on him again and his bloodshot eyes lit up. “ ** _Perfect!_** ” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down to the bench, speaking excitedly in Romanian. She thought she caught the word “test.”

Gil sprang to his feet and started fishing around on the table, and then the floor. “ **Zed!** _Is the alloy ready?_ Zeetha’s here!”

“Almost!” Zed called back. Zeetha could hear the Gift buzzing in his voice as well, though not as much as in Gil’s. “Do you have the heat-resistant etchings brush?”

Gil stared around wildly. “Umm…yes!” He pushed Zeetha’ leg to the side and pulled a slim paintbrush out from under her knee. “ _Got it!_ Come **on!** ”

“Wait a minute!” Zeetha cried in Skifandrian. “How did you know what he was saying? Zed, how—”

Gil beamed and tapped the metal things above his ears. “We…”

That was the last thing he said that she understood, because the rest was very enthusiastic, long-worded Romanian gibberish. At one point he broke off to shout “Aha!” and grab a band of leather from the floor, which she recognized as the same sort of circlet he wore, complete with the odd metal devices and wires sticking off the sides. But the signature mask at the front was missing.

Gil waved it in her face and kept babbling. Zeetha leaned back.

“Here!” said Zed, coming up behind her with the steaming jar at the end of a long pair of tongs. He set it carefully down on the table, then unceremoniously dropped the tongs on the floor and wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Brush?”

Brandishing the paintbrush with delight, Gil broke off his monologue to slip past Zeetha and begin spreading whatever was in the jar onto the thin leather of the thunjahot band. He kept talking for a moment, but soon his tongue was sticking out the side of his mouth in concentration.

Zed stood next to Zeetha, looking over Gil’s shoulder. “Your twin has some really neat ideas,” he confessed in what Zeetha thought was an unduly awed undertone. “I didn’t even know notwans could **be** Gifted. But I never would have thought about expanding the class of thoughts the thunjahot receives! Hai, do you know what a ‘ _neuron’_ is?”

“How should I know?” Zeetha hissed back, pointedly ignoring his second comment. “That’s ‘science’ stuff. What do you mean, anyway? What are you expanding?”

Zed lit up at the chance to explain. Ugh, so Gifted. “Right, you didn’t understand when Gil was saying! See, the thunjahot reflect a warrior’s emotions, right, to remind them to be open and true? The cuneiform on the band calls on Ashtara to spread the gift of life to the metal face and all that. I’m not sure I understand the **Europan** way of thinking about it, because we still can’t get anything more refined than basic thoughts and impressions, but Gil figured out that if we modified the script to summon perception of more complex cognitive…”

Technically he was still speaking Skifandrian. Technically. Zeetha tuned out to watch Gil work. He kept blowing hair out of his eyes but his hands were steady as he painted over the band of the circlet with what she now recognized as melted royal bronze—the metal that usually formed the tiny mask, not to mention other traditional pieces of armor like arm bands and parts of sword hilts. The tiny holy symbols etched into the leather sparked with Ashtara’s blessing as he covered them one by one.

“Gloves!” Zeetha yelped when a drop of the burning metal fell on Gil’s hand with a sizzling hiss. “You should be wearing gloves!”

“ **Shhh** ,” Gil snapped. “ _Nearly done._ ”

“He’s nearly done,” Zed said in Skifandrian.

“A warrior must first shield herself,” said Zeetha, quoting an old training axiom. She darted over to the nearest supplies cabinet, by the front door. She couldn’t believe she was the one making sure everyone stayed safe. That was the problem with Gifteds—they got so stupid when they were being smart!

“And we’re cooling it off before we put anything on my head,” she declared, pulling out a freeze stick as well.

Zed made a disgruntled noise. “Fiiine.”

Gil shouted something in Romanian, holding the bronzed circlet triumphantly above his head.

“Done?” Zeetha asked.

Zed nodded. Gil was already hurrying over, carrying the modified thunjahot in front of his like a prize and nearly tripping on the scattered tools on the floor. There were several drops of the molten royal bronze on his hands, turning the skin much too red and shiny for Zeetha’s taste. But he didn’t seem to notice.

“Here,” said Zed, catching up. He grabbed the freeze stick from Zeetha, uncapped it, and tapped it on the modified circlet. Ice formed with a dull crackle over metal and leather alike. Gil let out a breath he didn’t seem to realize he’d been holding.

“Ugh, now it’ll be cold!” said Zeetha. “Why didn’t you set it lower first?”

Zed rolled his eyes. “Just put it on!”

Gil held it up to her head, eyes sparkling. “So we…speak! Skif and Romanian! In here!” He tapped her forehead, then his own, grinning.

Against all common sense (which she’d never really favored anyway), Zeetha caved in the face of the Gifted boys’ pleading kit eyes. “Okay!”

She took the thunjahot and carefully placed it on her brow, strange metal things with the sticky-out wires above her ears.

For a moment she just felt stupid. Then she felt something pushing at her mind, not like the hypnotizing desert vultures (she’d heard) but someone knocking politely but un-ignorably on a door. In her brain. And it wasn’t knocking, but talking, or really feeling. There were two separate streams, really, almost identical except one felt somehow more filled with sparks, Both were an excited mixture of hope and pride and a burning _diditworkdiditworkdiditwork??!?_

Zeetha’s eyes went wide with amazement, and she felt the boys crow in victory before they even did it (and they definitely did, Gil pumping his fist in the air and Zed doing a couple steps of a traditional victorious warrior dance. Caught up in the triumphant emotions, Zeetha jumped a little herself.)

Gil shouted something in Romanian, and she still couldn’t understand more than a couple words but she felt the impression of his meaning: _even forunGifted(dumber){image of no sparks coming out of her head}! weare **great**!! now more manymore for **everyone** **I’mthebest!!**_

“No, you’re dumb and your hands are burnt,” Zeetha reminded him with a punch to the shoulder.

Gil stuck his tongue out at her. She could feel him knowing that she thought it was pretty awesome—though she was sure their mother could do much better.

Gil’s smile didn’t slip, but he sent out a stab of longing at that so bad that Zeetha flung her arms around his chest.

 _We’re here **now** , _she thought, hugging fiercely.

“Yeah,” Zed said aloud. He put a hand on each of their shoulders. “You’re part of the War Clan! Just wait until Aunt Zantabraxus—”

As if the devil had spoken, the front door of the laboratory opened at Zeetha’s back. Zed’s eyes widened and he choked on his words with a fearful blast of _weare Iam in **somuch** trouble_.

Zeetha turned around, one hand going automatically to the knife at her belt. The devil hadn’t spoken quite correctly, because it wasn’t her kolee in the doorway but Aunt Zemare, her actual aunt, who was ruling in Zantabraxus’s absence. Oh goddess, Zedmara was right: she was on a warpath. She was wearing all the ceremonial stuff she hated, and wasn’t even smiling a little bit.

Worse, a step behind her was Uncle Nod (actual uncle), who was the “official” Chief of Palace Security and **un** official Chief of Intelligence. He always said it made his job easier that people balked at the idea of a man having such high office and accepted the story that it was Zemia in charge. He was visibly concerned about something, which was even more alarming than the thin line of Aunt Zemare’s lips, because Uncle Nod usually kept his face as bland as his dull green-brown hair and clerkish outfit.

They began speaking at the same time.

“Zumil,” Aunt Zemare growled, “if you expect to ever be a—”

“Zeetha,” Uncle Nod began, “I need to know if you’re seen anyone—”

They broke off at almost the same moment, too, when they finally took in and processed the sight of Gil, Zeetha’s arm firmly around his shoulders.

“Oh, Goddess.” Uncle Nod pinched the bridge of his nose.

Zemare turned to her young brother in horror. “That’s not—”

Zeetha could feel a mixed guilty _I’moldest nearlywarrior shouldtakeresponsibility_ and desperate _but **~** ALL THIS **~** reallyreally **notmyfault**_ from Zed. He didn’t move. Gil was starting to feel mulish, with a dangerously Gift-sparky tinge, but he was still practically trembling with the same trepidation that consumed her mind. They were feeding that back and forth between them, caught in a paralyzing loop.

Zeetha seized the mulishness instead. Shifting to clutch his hand, she stepped forward, head high. Daughter of the War Queen and Chump of Europa. Future notwan Princess Guardian of Skifander.

“This is Gil,” she said clearly. “He’s my twin.” _Kreen_.

The adults shared a look that she had no trouble interpreting as _This is Awful_ , and Zed was just sort of frozen. But Gil squeezed her hand and sent a rush of warmth and a mental image of herself in strange, full-body metal armor, carrying a huge sword, with a sense that this was a brave protector. So she squeezed back and bulldozed on.

“He doesn’t really like Europa so he came back home to us. He has a really strong Gift. He and Zed invented this thing so we can talk—” she pointed at her modified thunjahot—“and I’m going to show him how to ride the zip lines as soon as his hands stop being burnt from it. But he’s ignoring the pain like a real warrior.” She added thoughtfully, as a concession to grown up sensibilities, “We should probably call my kolee home, if she’s done with her negotiations.”


	10. Chapter 8: An Extended Jouney Untertaken (Pt.1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title: Best Road Trip EVER* (*author's opinion; not so much the characters')  
> Alternate, alternate title: Tarvek NO

Tarvek was beginning to seriously regret joining Baron Wulfenbach on his quest to retrieve Gil from wherever he’d disappeared off to. It wasn’t the tense balance between blackmailing the most powerful man in Europa and dying because the Baron decided it wasn’t worth the risk to Gil and Tarvek’s father wouldn’t start a war if his son died in some “airship accident.” That was probably true—the Prince only cared about his Lucrezia, and the family would just replace him with Martellus—but Tarvek was past it. _So_ far past it. He would handle Tweedle when he got back, _no problem_. He’d develop a new poison or trick him down into the sewers or something. Tweedle was dumb enough to fall for that. And _nobody_ was going to be Storm King but _Tarvek_.

And Wulfenbach just wasn’t as _scary_ as he used to be. Tarvek had barely paid _attention_ when they got the zeppelin into the air and the Baron immediately turned back from the controls and started demanding things like “How long have you known?”, “How did you find out?” “Have you told _anyone?_ Your father? Lackeys? _Gilgamesh?_ ” He was practically throwing off _angry sparks—_ but Tarvek’s mind was **_flying_**. Except for a short half-year on the relative heaven that was Castle Wulfenbach, he lived in a _sea_ of fear and lies, where all his family were _electric eels_ , and he could _smell_ the terror beneath the Baron’s blustering fury—while Tarvek himself, for what felt like the first time _ever_ , was absolutely **_fearless_**. _Nothing_ could stop him! Not his father, his family, Wulfenbach—first step find Gil, second step _become Storm King_ —no, be _recognized_ by _all Europa_ as Storm King, because he already _was_ , rightfully. He just needed some stuff! So! Step one, _find Gil_ ; step two, _find_ **_all the Muses_** _and the crown_ ; step three **_officially_** **_become Storm King!_** _Ha!_

Tarvek bit his tongue on the urge to interrupt and explain his whole magnificent plan right then and there, because the defeat of Wulfenbach’s illegitimate rule was _inevitable_ but there was destined-to-win and there was just _stupid_ , and unbefitting a _true_ King anyway. He was going to be a _gracious_ victor. And _obviously_ Gil would be his Chief Advisor, so the Baron wouldn’t even be able to complain at _all_.

So, almost _fidgeting_ with the energy racing through his nerves, he rolled his eyes in an appropriately condescending manner and answered a couple of the Baron’s frantic questions. He’d only _just_ figured it out, yes _really_ , which was actually surprising because it was _completely obvious_. But _probably_ nobody else knew, unless they’d seen Gil and the Baron panicking or angry or trying to hide something in the same way. No, Gil had _never_ seemed like he would _run away_ , even when he talked about it sometimes. He liked the _Castle_. He just didn’t like anyone _on_ it.

 _That_ gave the Baron enough pause for Tarvek to grab the engine repair kit back from him, the withholding of which was the _real_ reason he was answering any questions. Regal graciousness was all very good but he had _plans_ , which meant **_things to build_**.

 _That_ was the problem: the Baron wouldn’t let him _do_ anything. He pulled Tarvek _away_ before he could do more than pry the casing off the propeller gears, which was _abominable_ because Tarvek _needed_ those to build an electromagnetic knife-launcher, in case the Baron _did_ decide to do away with him. (Again: Tarvek was _confident_ , not _completely oblivious to danger_. His own _sister_ had nearly had him assassinated once, out of spite when he broke her favorite toy horse.)

And just _half an hour later_ , Wulfenbach yanked him out from under the pilot’s console before he could rewire the controls. He kept shouting that Tarvek was going to _crash the ship_ or something, which was absurd because he was actually _reconfiguring it_ to make the autopilot _more intelligent_ , based on some diagrams he remembered from Von Zlitz’s account of his dissection of the Muse Thalia forty years ago. It had been a _horrifying_ read; Tarvek had nearly _cried_ imagining Thalia under Von Zlitz’s callous screwdriver—the single detail he left out of his otherwise _very_ comprehensive explanation to the Baron as to the tragic history of the Muses and also that Tarvek _knew what he was doing_ so _give back the pliers **or else!**_

He very nearly blurted out that he was the Storm King _right then_ , because _that_ would show the usurper. But his plans weren’t ready _quite_ yet, and he might _need_ Wulfenbach to get **_Gil_** back. _Then_ they could kill the Baron—or just make him retire or something, if Gil felt strongly about it—and Tarvek would appoint _Gil_ as the new Baron Wulfenbach, all correct according to the laws of primogeniture. Except of course without the “ruling the Empire” bit because that was _Tarvek’s_ job…

But it was so _unfair_! Wulfenbach was just making his _own_ modifications to the ship, the same fast courier in which he’d come to Sturmhalten. He wouldn’t even _tell_ Tarvek what had him so worried that he couldn’t spare the time to go back to the Wulfenbach fleet and get a vessel equipped for both rapid cross-country flight _and_ whatever hostile situation awaited them at the end. He just hoarded all the good tools and worked at retrofitting the courier with huge death rays. The only thing he left Tarvek alone to fix was the _interior decorating_.

Which was, in fairness, in need _desperate_ of attention. The blocky chairs and plain, utilitarian walls had _clearly_ been assembled by a complete _amateur of aesthetics_. Tarvek got slightly carried away designing rooms for the to-be-refurbished Palace of Enlightenment as well, and what he would wear on his coronation day, and what _Gil_ would wear on his coronation day—he would actually look quite good in Wulfenbach colors! And Anevka, and Seffie because she was all right sometimes, and Tweedle could be dressed in a _fool’s motley, ha!_ It was a _remarkably simple_ chemical process to strip the ink from the maps by the pilot’s chair and repurpose it, as well as the newly re-clearized parchment, so he had _plenty_ of supplies for sketching.

No, no, first things first. Tarvek was wearing sufficiently nice clothing now, but it was suited to a casual day in the laboratory at home, not whatever _horrific trouble_ Gil had gotten them into this time. He needed something _magnificent_ , to wear into _battle_. Charitably, he doodled something for the Baron to wear as well, in evil black and dark Wulfenbach blue, with swords and a fantastic coat that would swish villainously when he spun. Though not as much as Tarvek’s own _shining armor and majestic purple cape!_

And _why wait?_ They might need those battle outfits _really soon!_

With a few adjustments to the formula, the ink-stripper proved entirely capable of removing dyes from clothing, _particularly_ in conjunction with a fabric press made from the dismantled remains of the no-longer-hideous chairs. Of course, it was _incredibly_ improper to remove one’s clothing in public, even in what was functionally a laboratory, but sometimes sacrifices in propriety had to be made in the name of fashion—particularly _scientifically perfected warfare fashion_.

The coat Wulfenbach had shrugged off and left on a chair at some point was also sacrificed in the name of new outfits. The B-quality blue dye of the main jacket would be good for a stealth cloak print, and he needed the extra fabric and gold epaulets. They would make _perfect_ cloak pins.

Before he dismantled the seams and fed the material into his dye remixer, Tarvek thoughtfully removed the several small weapons and tools cleverly secreted in the pocket lining and sleeves, and put them in his _own_ , much more _well-hidde_ n pockets. But he _still_ didn’t feel sufficiently prepared for whatever might be standing between him and his friend. He needed stronger material…

“What are you _doing?_ ” Wulfenbach shouted a couple minutes later, dragging Tarvek back inside the main cabin from the windowsill whence he’d been perched.

“ ** _Unhand me!_** ” Tarvek yelled, struggling for all he was worth. “ _How **dare** you?_ I haven’t even _gotten a_ **_sample_** yet!”

The Baron glanced at the extended-reach scissors in his hand, which were technically speaking a pair of scissors at the end of a long, slim stick, operated by wires tied to the handle end of the stick. Tarvek had _just_ invented it, for _this specific_ _purpose_.

“Were you going to _slice a hole in the gas envelope?_ ” Wulfenbach demanded incredulously. He didn’t even seem to _notice_ that Tarvek was kicking him repeatedly in the ribs.

“ _Obviously!_ ” Tarvek snapped, glaring back through crooked glassed. “I need _much tougher fabric_ than there is _inside_ if I’m going to look right _and_ be protected in a fight. And the sheen would work well as a stealth cloak base! Stealth _armor_.”

Wulfenbach scowled. “Typical,” he muttered. Then he added under his breath, “Although it _would_ probably be easier to breach the valley unseen…”

Tarvek finally succeeded in scrambling enough to get his feet back on the floor and pull away. “I _told_ you so.” He offered the extended-reach scissors to the Baron. “Now _get me a large patch_ of the envelope and we’ll save Gil the _right_ way!”


	11. Chapter 9: An Urgent Message Received

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zantabraxus, War Queen of Skifander, was not having a good day.

Zantabraxus, War Queen of Skifander, had not had a good day. It wasn’t that the negotiations weren’t going well—though they weren’t; the Tamanin were itching for a fight almost as much as the War Queen was itching to _punch_ their insufferable Royal Ambassador _in the nose_. It wasn’t that her tent had none of the heating of the caverns back home, though that did make her joints ache _significantly_ more than they would have after a night on a sleeping mat twenty years ago. It wasn’t even that a pack of scrub weasels had attacked the camp _again_  this afternoon. That was to be expected when negotiations were held in the no-woman’s-land of the desert-edge. They had made a good supper, anyway, once her warriors’ myriad small wounds were treated.

No, the War Queen’s mood was a result of the _combination_ of all of the above, in addition to a hundred more minor annoyances and a sense of unease that she couldn’t quite place. It was most likely the Tamanin—she had forbidden Zeetha to join her for these talks and she didn’t regret it for a moment (no more than a moment or two—she missed her daughter. Her zumil.) There was a decent chance these duplicitous outlanders would try to ambush her party rather than part as honorable opponents, and Zeetha wasn’t ready for that. Of course, if war was declared, rules of peace no longer applied, but there was victory and there was _dishonor_.

Zantabraxus rubbed her eyes and stared at the ceiling of her tent. This “falling asleep” plan wasn’t working, but she knew she needed some sort of break when her internal monologue started to sound like her kolee’s lectures. Now _there_ was a woman who would have attacked the enemy three days ago and been done with it.

Which was _not_ a good idea. No. Definitely not. Even if it would involve wiping that smug expression clean off the Royal Ambassador’s face, preferably in a rinse of his _own blood_. Zantabraxus had been waiting for an excuse to test her gravatic reduction ray on a larger scale; a good _war_ ought to—

Right, add “five days since last lab session” to the list of reasons she had a burning sun over her head.

She rolled onto one elbow and sketched a quick glyph in the dirt, the sign for peace. A drop of blood from her fangs and a sense of calm stole through the tent like a soft breeze. It wasn’t as strong as it would be in the Valley, but she hadn’t done it so much for the effect as for the action itself, the easing of pressure to _do_ and the flicker of connection to something More. It never ceased to befuddle her that Europans believed the Gift—the “Spark”—ran somehow _contrary_ to religion.

Feeling significantly more relaxed, Zantabraxus stretched for her legs and wiggled into a more comfortable position. Back to the negotiating tent tomorrow, and if the Snootface Ambassador wanted a war, well, he could _have_ one - once all interested parties could read on the meeting record that it was _his_ fault. See what _that_ did to his trade with the other Dark Countries, ha! Skifander would _not_ be provoked by petty grievances.

There was a sound of quick movement outside, and a small paper bird zipped into the tent and settled into Zantabraxus’s catching hand. It was followed closely by Jaxia, the young warrior who’d been guarding the royal tent.

“My queen!” she said, snapping to attention just short of running into Zantabraxus, who had sprung to her feet. The girl had been lunging after the bird. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. The message—”

“Is for me alone,” Zantabraxus assured her. “It wasn’t your reflexes at fault.”

Jaxia relaxed, but Zantabraxus’s own pulse was quickening. What news from home was so urgent that they sent a life-blessed messenger bird? She hadn’t been lying to assuage her guard’s feelings: glyphs “for the War Queen” and “no others” marked its wings. No one else could _touch_ the bird until she had received the message. That couldn’t just be new information for her negotiations, or some other issue of diplomacy—none but a Skifandrian could open even a regular Goddess-kept message, so there was no need to use such a secure…

She was already pricking her finger again, letting the bird bow forward to taste the blood. As soon as its beak was stained red it collapsed, unfolding to an inanimate sheet of paper with a hastily scribbled message, glowing just enough to be read in the dark. She recognized Nod’s slanted handwriting, and personal cipher.

_Gilgamesh returned yesterday, somehow. He invented something—very strong Gift. Alone, no sign of Chump. Nobody outside the War Palace knows (yet.)_

Zantabraxus read it a second time, and a third, before she realized she had picked her sheathed swords from the ground by her sleeping mat. She only noticed because she was gripping them so hard her fingers hurt. Whether she was readying for combat or in desperate need of something reliable to hold, she wasn’t sure. **_Gilgamesh_**. _Her_ —and _alone?_ **_Where_** —

“My queen?” Jaxia asked hesitantly.

Zantabraxus looked at her, eyes flashing. She had almost forgotten the girl was there. “Ready to leave at _once_ ,” she ordered, voice thrumming with the Gift. “Tell _everyone else_ to do the same. I have _business_ _at home_.” She donned her swords in one fluid motion, still clutching the letter in her other hand. _This_ was why she’d picked them up. The Tamanin could have their war after she had _seen her_ **_son_**.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who has thought in way more detail than arguably necessary about Skifandrian magiscience! *points loudly at self*


	12. Chapter 9.5: A Couple Conundrums

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile in Skifander...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Think of this as sort of adjunct to Ch. 9? Which, by the way, I've changed to have taken place about 8 hours earlier. Doesn't matter to plot, just to my perception of geography and travel times. Anyway, I meant all three scenes to all be one chapter, but then Zanta's got long enough to stand on its own and more importantly the tone ended up really different.

Zeetha was bored. Booored. Bboooorrrreedddd. She leaned backwards off the side of the infirmary bed and expressed the sentiment by groaning in Gil’s ear, “I’m booored.”

He glanced over at her upside-down face for a moment, then his eyes flickered to Zed sitting opposite them on the floor and he rolled them eloquently enough to make up for the shortness of his reply: “No.”

Zeetha turned over and glared at the top of his head, then bent down to hang her hair all over his face. “You’ve been messing with the bands for ages. Aren’t twins supposed to go on adventures?”

Gil gathered up her hair and threw it back at her head, then ducked when most of it just fell back. He said insistently something in Romanian.

“We’re not just fiddling,” Zed translated. “We’re **improving**. And I’m teaching him heirographics.” He pointed to one of the etched stones spread out on the floor between them, from the War Queen’s ready-made set. “What’s that?”

“Grow big,” Gil recited in Skiff. “Size, no plants or animals.”

“Boooring,” Zeetha repeated, and flopped back, not even bothering to grab her thunjahot from where it was sitting untouched on Gil’s knee. They had been here for nearly two days now, ever since Aunt Zemare and Uncle Nod caught them in the lab. Gil was supposed to be the one in bed of course, recovering from, according to Uncle Makar the doctor, draining a lot of his own life energy to power his instant-traveling machine. He mostly needed sleep. Zeetha was excused from classes to watch over him, or maybe to _also_ be kept safe-but-also- _basically_ -prisoner by the guard at the door.

But Gil always ended up on the floor doing science stuff when Zed came by, which was like _all the time_. He was the only visitor; Gil being here was a Secret so no one else came, not even Zedmara, because (Zed reported) she was still pretending not to know. The way talk ran around the Palace, Zeetha figured most of the War clan must be pretending not to know by now, not to mention all the servants. Or maybe they were just ashamed of the _notwans_. Even Uncle Nod stopped asking questions after the first afternoon, when Gil explained how he ran away from the dread Baron’s giant flying balloon school. (As far as Zeetha understood it. Even with the thunjahot on, before Zed came back and he and Gil took hers to mess with, she couldn’t make sense of everything, or be sure that Gil wasn’t making some of it up. How could a whole palace _never_ land? Uncle Nod seemed to believe it, though, and understand even more than Gil said. He usually did. But he hadn’t explained and he hadn’t come back.)

Zeetha sighed loudly, arms flung wide, ignored by her dumb Gifted brother and cousin, and everyone else she knew. If only someone would tell _her_ something, or let her _do_ something, or _anything._ “Boooorred.”

-

_[About 24 hours earlier…]_

“He doesn’t **know?** ”

Zemare stared at him while Nod repeated, “He has no idea. Nor does Zeetha, of course. I don’t know why—”

She started pacing, constrained by the walls of Zantabraxus’s private office, where they could be sure they weren’t overheard. “Some absurd idea of Chump’s, I suppose. ‘Klaus’s’” She twisted her face like the Europan name was bitter in her mouth. “You’d think, having stolen the boy in the first place—” She stopped abruptly, whirled around to face her little brother. “You didn’t **tell** them, did you?”

“ **Goddess** , no,” he said fervently. He leaned on the War Queen’s desk. “I was thinking Zanta…”

“Yes,” Zemare agreed instantly. “Definitely Zanta’s job. Her children, her idiot husband…who’s going to tell Zanta though?”

Nod winced. “Whichever of us did fewer penances at the Temple last year?”

Zemare snorted. “Or more. So we earned a break.”

“Chump is the one who’s going to need Ashtara’s favor to survive this.”

“You think he’s coming back? If he’s all but abandoned the boy…”

“Saved him,” Nod corrected. “He disappeared in the first place to keep Gilgamesh and Zeetha safe. If he’s apparently the same conquering Baron we’ve been hearing about, I expect it’s because he returned to find Europa falling apart. And now Gilgamesh is back in danger?” He spread his hands. “I’d give it a couple days before he barges in, guns drawn.”

Zemare sighed. “As long as Zanta gets back first, it’s not my problem. You sent the bird, right?”

“As soon as the kids were settled,” he promised. “She should be back within a couple days.”

“And until then, it’s a security concern.” Zemare drummed her fingers on her formal dagger-belt. “Work with Zemia then, and remind the guards not to gossip. We probably can’t stop it in the family, but we don’t want anyone else to find out Gilgamesh is here.”

They exchanged dark looks, both thinking of the same woman. The Civics Queen, Tara, was all right, often a political ally, but the High Priestess was…old-fashioned.


	13. Chapter 10: An Extended Journey Undertaken (Pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now with angst and flashbacks!
> 
> (or, In Which the Author Attempts to Suggest That, While Kidnapping Children is In General a Bad Idea, Klaus is Trying His Best and Should _Really Keep This One Too_.)

Klaus had had _plans_ for dealing with sparks in breakthrough. He’d been developing them for years, even before he had children of his own. Blast shields, sedatives…he’d actually started looking forward to the first breakthrough among the students. He was going to _revolutionize_ the management of new sparks.

_None_ of his plans had included being trapped for two days on a seven-meter zeppelin with a furiously fugueing _eight-year-old_ —in search of a _second_ eight-year-old in breakthrough. Of course fugues were contagious, so far as one spark tended to set off others, but not quite so _literally a_ s this felt. It wasn’t the same anyway—the boys had been apart for weeks, far too long for Sturmvoraus’s breakthrough to be precipitated by Gilgamesh’s.

Unless Klaus’s understanding of breakthrough triggers was _extremely_ erroneous, in which case he needed to get both boys back to a _lab,_ and _hooked up—_

Klaus pulled himself away from that madness-bound train of thought. He wasn’t going to experiment on _Gil_. Not for something this frivolous. (Sturmvoraus…maybe. It would serve the boy right for _destroying all the maps_.)

He glanced back to make sure the lordling was still asleep. Yes, still there in the makeshift bed of de-colored clothing on the floor. He was curled into a fetal position rather than sprawled out as Klaus had left him, but he hadn’t moved. Sedatives _had_ come into play there, much less subtly than Klaus’s original schemes had entailed. He couldn’t prepare for their arrival, keep an eye on the landscape, _and_ prevent the boy from destroying the ship every ten minutes.

His bizarre camouflage paint _had_ done the trick on the zeppelin, Klaus had to admit. Though he was reasonably certain real stealth cloak dyes, however they were made, didn’t use crushed electric bloodwart roots as a base. But that was what the hill they’d touched down on had been covered in, and sparks in breakthrough were infamous for using the materials at hand, _whatever_ they happened to be. Better let him blow off steam with a morning pulverizing plants and painting the zeppelin (followed by Klaus distinfecting _everything_ —bloodwart wasn’t named for its _health benefits_ ) than crash later because the boy got into the engine again in a moment of inattention. Even if it set Klaus’s teeth grinding to stop that long. But now if he kept a very light current running through the paint, just enough to stimulate the bloodwart without electrifying the metal cabin, nobody on the ground would see them as more than a glimmer in the air, which would greatly facilitate approaching Skifander without being shot out of the sky. So it _might_ have been worth the delay.

_Then_ he’d knocked the boy out with a small dose of C-gas, half an hour after they’d taken off again, because enough was enough and he was clearly running on nothing but spark. It wasn’t healthy. And almost as soon as they were in the air he’d been attaching wires to his forehead and insisting it was for a device to transcribe notes directly from his thoughts. One of the wires _did_ have a pen attached, and Klaus could relate to the desire for a faster note-taking device, but he couldn’t help but notice that _this_ one would overheat and electrocute the user if powered by more than 33 watts. That would be _decidedly_ unhealthy. So C-gas it was.

He should really have put the boy to sleep yesterday, or even as soon as they’d left Sturmhalten, but he’d been too busy being frantic about Gil. Between that blasted teleport (it had _worked_ , he was _fine_ and _not at all vaporized)_ and Skifander (it would be _perfectly peaceful_ , Zanta would look after him, nobody would _dare_ —) the Sturmvoraus boy’s discovery of the truth wasn’t even a _priority._ The extra distraction of managing his breakthrough was almost useful, a focusing tool.

Now Klaus didn’t have anything to pay attention to but the landscape below. Which he _needed_ to pay attention to, because Sturmvoraus had _erased_ _all the_ _maps_ , and they were getting close enough that flying in the general direction of the hidden valley would have them miss it by hundreds of kilometers. It would have come down to this anyway, of course—Skifander took the “hidden” in “hidden valley” very seriously. The entrance wasn’t much more than a large fissure to start with, and the mirrors below made it look like little more than a particularly long crack. _And_ there was some sort of engine in the Temple (which they’d barely let him enter, much less inspect the equipment within) that cast a shield of pure energy concentrated into invisible, impenetrable matter across the lips of the valley. Starting about half a meter off the ground (unless anything had changed in seven years) the energy diffused into a sort of psychic distortion that made the “crack in the ground” difficult to focus on for the range of about half a kilometer in every direction but down. It was _secure_.

Fortunately, Klaus had a _Plan_. It involved a great deal of stubborn will and a couple very large death rays newly mounted on the nose of his ship.

He wouldn’t even know what the hidden valley looked like from above if Zanta hadn’t taken him out once in one of her strange, seemingly powerless flying machines. When he’d fled with Gil, they’d gone underground via the River. Skifandrians barely considered the Skiff to exist after it dropped beneath the earth and left their valley; it was the best head start he could think to buy. He’d slipped in at the very end of the valley, Gil asleep (drugged just enough not to wake up and cry) in an airtight container affixed to his chest, and swum until he couldn’t feel his arms in the inky black chill. Then he’d struggled out onto an underground beach and started digging for the surface with the equipment he’d packed, most of which was even more waterclogged than he’d anticipated. Gil woke up halfway there, he remembered, and started crying for food. Klaus had brought plenty of just-add-water baby formula, so they were fine once Gil decided the new, non-mammary-produced drink was acceptable. That took about a week longer than reaching the surface did. They only ran out about halfway through the desert, trekking through the blazing sun and shifting sand. It wasn’t even proper “sand”, really, more like pebbles. But the heat and dryness were certainly constantly, overwhelmingly present. All the water went to Gil, of course. Klaus might have gone mad for a while then, until they stumbled over that oasis. One foot in front of the other, running over and over in his head a list of things he could do to ensure that Gil’s life was never in this much danger again. He’d made tolerable progress on that, since they got back to Europa. Not nearly enough…

A rustling of cloth pulled Klaus’s attention away from the window. They weren’t even flying over the desert—they’d passed it around midnight yesterday. Now the terrain was all cliffs and ridges, rockier and only slightly less dry. They’d still had plenty of supplies when Klaus carried Gil through this area.

The Sturmvoraus boy was moving in his sleep, curling into an even tighter ball and shaking his head, mouthing something into the pale fabric. Klaus moved a little closer to hear his words, grateful for the distraction. The boy stayed silent, though his shoulders quaked like he was sobbing. He just bunched one fist around the sleeve of Klaus’s bleached coat until his knuckles were as white as the fabric.

Klaus knelt and touched his shoulder lightly.

Half a second later, Sturmvoraus was across the room with his back to the bulkhead, only partly uncurled from the tight ball in which he slept.

“Get _back_ , usurper!” he said shrilly.

Klaus had been called worse, though not, in a while, by a boy of fewer than ten years. A boy who held a suddenly-appeared knife steady even when his eyes were bright with spark-fury and child-panic. Who crouched like a cornered wolf, and knew how to cry in his sleep without making a sound. Gil had never done that. Klaus had spent entire nights crouching beneath stony overhangs, pressing Gil’s face against his chest so his son’s cries wouldn’t attract searchers or predators.

He raised both hands to show they were empty. “Truce. No assassins. You were having a nightmare.”

Sturmvoraus lowered his knife just the slightest bit (Klaus could _swear_ he’d removed all the boy’s weapons when he put him to bed.) “You really _are_ Gil’s father, aren’t you.”

It might have been a threat, but there were teartracks on his cheeks and so much wonderment in his tone that Klaus almost had to stifle the urge to snort in amusement. “I’m afraid we’ve rather established that, yes. Any particular reason you’re restating the conclusion now?”

“Gil’s the only other person who wakes me up,” Tarvek said simply. As if that wasn’t something he’d ever questioned.

“Ah.”

“ ** _You_** _knocked me out_.” The boy pointed his knife accusatorily at Klaus, madness leaking back into his voice.

“You’re in breakthrough,” Klaus said patiently and nonthreateningly. “You hadn’t slept in two days. It was necessary.”

“Oh.” He lowered the knife completely. “I _suppose_ I could _permit it_ , then.”

_Breakthrough_ , Klaus reminded himself for the nth time. And _none_ of the royals regarded Klaus as much more than a jumped-up sidekick, so it wasn’t precisely _Tarvek’s_ fault that he’d been raised to be condescending and imperious. Changing that was what Klaus’s school was _for_.

And just like that his thoughts circled back to Gil alone in Skifander, and he stood up to check the landscape out the window again. A pair of ridges like the coils of a snake loomed familiarly to the right, and he adjusted his course by a couple degrees. He’d told Gil stories to keep him quiet as they snuck through these hills, from one rivulet of water to the next. Mostly Heterodyne stories, because that was what he knew best, though a few about Zantabraxus’s adventures as well, or old fairy tales from his childhood. Some of the adventures included himself. None included Lucrezia.

The hills looked smaller from above, but Klaus still remembered the way through them back to Skifander. So long as he could see them. The sun was nearing the horizon. They wouldn’t make Skifander before the light disappeared completely, and with it any chance of identifying the hidden valley from the air. It would difficult enough in the day.

“Why the _maps_ ,” he grumbled.

Sturmvoraus was next to him in an instant, nose pressed against the window. “They weren’t very _good_ **_anyway_**. If your _memory_ can be _relied upon_ , all we **_really_** have to _do_ is _reinvent_ **_Prende’s Lantern_** , or _more_ _accurately_ the _Queen of Mines’ **anauroric freeze device**_. _Then_ , with the **_power_** _of **eternal daylight** , _we can…”

He ran off, no doubt to take the ship apart some more. Still talking at high speed. The rest seemed to have rejuvenated him completely. Perhaps Klaus should have let him work until he collapsed on his own, breakthrough run down through sheer lack of stamina. _That_ was an attractive notion.

Klaus pressed his forehead against the window and growled his frustration. He was running down, too, he could _feel_ it. Zanta’s mental exercises would only keep him going for about another day and he needed to be as alert as possible when they reached Skifander. It would take more than twenty-four hours to get everyone home safe, even with the courier ship. They had to stop for the night anyway, within an hour or so. He _should s_ et the autopilot to hold them in place until daybreak and get some sleep. He’d have to knock Sturmvoraus out again—the boy would be readier for it this time, but he could only have gotten at most the preliminary Smoke Knight training at this age, so Klaus wasn’t particularly concerned. Or perhaps it’d be better to let him wear himself out again, let the breakthrough run its course as much as possible, then put him to sleep just before they reached Skifander. It would certainly remove a complicating factor from whatever mess awaited Klaus there. But then Klaus would have to stay awake to keep an eye on him…

The ship shuddered, too much to be an effect of the wind. Klaus looked out first, scanning for assailants—they hadn’t reached Skifander, but they’d been into the Dark Countries since the desert.

Ground and sky were both still clear. Then back—oh sweet lightning, Sturmvoraus was taking apart the engine again. Klaus could only pray Gil was causing less trouble—or much, much more, if that was what it took to stay alive.


	14. Chapter 11: A Meeting or Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I thought it was really only fair that Gil offend people not just by existing, but by being his pint-sized, protective, smartass sparky self. Zeetha too. Definitely their parents' children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be Gil POV but then everyone kept speaking in Skifandrian and it just seemed easier to switch? Don't worry, he's next. And I realized Skifandriqns should be called Klaus "Chump" so I fixed that in previous chapters. Unbetaed as usual, so for my peace of mind, please point out typos!

“You are fools! Notwans bring nothing but _death_.” The High Priestess’s voice snapped through the thick stone of the infirmary door, and Zeetha clutched Gil’s hand and sent _staycalm bestill bequiet_ through their matching thunjahots, trying to cover his growing itch to barge out and join the argument. Or more like his growing _rage_ , stoking up with the Gift again, and just when he’d finally been calming _down_. But then the High Priestess had arrived outside their door and started a shouting match with Aunt Zemare, and Uncle Nod by the occasional sound of his quieter voice.

“You cannot imagine you can conceal the beings forever.”

Zeetha didn’t flinch, even on the inside—she was too used to the names. Though they were usually whispered just loudly enough to hear, not flung in her face—or even through a door. Not usually all at once. Not usually ‘ _beings_ ’ sneered like the High Priestess could at least concede, at swordpoint, that they did _exist_. _Unfortunately_.

And she didn’t like the way Gil echoed the shrinking she couldn’t help, the way she could feel him recognizing the feeling of _no-good_ and _never-enough_ that came every time the High Priestess hissed the word for “twin” that meant “half-being” and “wrong.” That giant balloon school hadn’t been any kinder than the catty and conservative at home.

But Gil’s Gift kept pushing him to fight back instead of hide, roiling through him and overflowing into Zeetha like flaring magma. Or maybe it was just Gil, and Zeetha too—she always simmered. The next time the High Priestess called them “unwanteds” in the way that meant _things which go against the will of the goddesses and never should be_ , she didn’t do anything but keep ahold of Gil's hand when he hopped off the bed and stormed out into the corridor to shout back, in accented Skifandian, “ _You’re ‘ **unwanted!**_ ’”

The High Priestess stopped midway through demanding Zemare explain how she could tolerate these _things_ to narrow her eyes and practically _snarl_ at Gil. “How _dare_ you?”

“This is not your fight, children,” ordered Zemare. “Go back inside.” She was dressed for morning training in a breastband and loose pants, against the Priestess’s deep purple formal sashes and ceremonial bronze and gold. She didn’t even have the circlet on identifying her as the chief authority in the War Queen’s absence. But she was a Warrior Princess in her own right, swords were slung over her back, and she stood like she was just _waiting_ for the first punch to be thrown. Nod was half a step behind her, one hand on a long, lethally-pared knife at his hip.

“It is _yes_ our fight!” said Gil. He’d picked up a _lot_ of Skiff in the last few days. “You talk about _us!_ ” He squeezed Zeetha’s hand.

It could have been weird, to say ‘us’ so vehemently when they’d only known each other for a couple days, but that was what being a twin was _about_ , Zeetha had decided that much, and bouncing righteous fury back and forth, it was easy to squeeze back, smother shame and meet the High Priestess’s glare for glare. “Yeah! Say it on the dueling ground!”

It was an old, semi-formal challenge. The High Priestess looked away, back at the adults, with an arrogant sniff. “Zemare, _contain_ the notwans.”

There was Gift humming angrily in her voice, too. Zeetha reckoned it wasn’t as strong as Gil’s.

Zemare barely pretended not to snicker. “They are definitely Zanta’s kids.”

“You are making a tragic error,” snapped the Priestess. “Their presence—their _existence_ —brings dishonor to the War Clan, and threat to the entire Valley.”

“Zantabraxus’s children are not the ones acting like a threat to the peace of the Valley, Chosen,” Nod said tightly.

“This is not your concern, _man_.” The High Priestess barely even spared him a glance. One hand brushed against her elaborately patterned belt on its way to the knife at her hip, spike-hilted and royal bronze. “Zemare, you have had the proper theological training, I know your mother ensured it. When there was just one it was _tolerable_ , but with these ‘children’ together, the empty space their half-souls leave will allow the plagues of Narkell into this world.”

Zemare made a neutral noise, arms crossed.

“That’s stupid,” Gil said loudly. But in Romanian, and the High Priestess ignored him.

“Your sister is too blinded by foreign… _devices_ , but surely you can see. As a _woman_ it is your duty to protect your family, and as the Chosen of Ashtara it is _my_ duty to protect all the people of Skifander.” Her hand rested on the spiked hilt. The blade was sharp, curved, and decorated with barely-visible glyphs for strength and making-worthy. “Step back, and _I_ will explain to Zantabraxus when she returns.”

For a long moment, as if the world itself was holding its breath, the women stared each other down.

Then Nod’s hunting knife flashed between them, flashing with glyphs of its own. A gift from the War Queen, endowed with the same strengths as a sworn Warrior’s swords. “Explain how you attempted to beguile her deputy into letting you kill her children? Mother’s pious, but she made sure we were **all** educated, Nameeri. I can see the convincement glyph on your belt.”

The High Priestess’s lips twisted into something more enraged than a mere sneer. “ _You_ are **_far_** above your place. Yet I am **_still_** _trying_ to save your soul.” Finger pricked on the hilt of her knife, her hand flashed through the air, sketching out another of the Goddess’s signs.

Zemare’s sword got in the way this time. “No, you’re **leaving** ,” she said, hard as the edge of her blade. “Children, back. **Now** ,” she snapped.

Gil dropped Zeetha’s hand and darted back into their room, and her heart-clench of betrayal was overrun by his burst of already familiar absurd, Gift-delighted anticipation.

“I am _doing my **duty**_ ,” snarled the High Priestess, blood-tipped sacrificial knife moving almost too quickly to see.

Gil burst out again with the eager ferocity of a sandstorm and the fire-spitter he’d called a “ _blowtorch_ ” in Romanian, which was neither a fire-spitter (much) nor particularly Europan anymore. The insides were mostly still clockwork, but very rearranged—Zeetha had watched him rebuild it almost from scratch—and the outer metal skin was recast in royal bronze and carefully decorated with heirographs. He’d learned those just as fast as Skiff. She figured he cheated with the Gift.

Zeetha pulled out her own dagger and sliced Gil’s hand as he raced back past her, squarely into the High Priestess’s path. Matching Zeetha’s smirk with his own fangy grin, Gil slammed his bloody palm against the button for Defense Mode, engraved with the heirograph for _shield_. Energy crackled from the mouth of the device and spiraled out into a semi-translucent circle of near-matter, about as big as he was—just in time to block a flash of light from the Priestess’s hands. The glyph-attack rebounded to scorch the ceiling above her head.

She didn’t stumble back—nothing so undignified. It was just a step. “It’s _Gifted?_ ”

“ _Yeah_ , **_more_** than _you!_ ” Gil shouted proudly. Something like horror roiled in Zeetha’s gut (what was he (were they) _doing?_ Against the _High Priestess?_ ) But in another second it was stifled by Gil’s adrenaline-bright glee and her own—at the _machine working_ , at the _perfect twin teamwork_ , at the _personally affronted_ look on the High Priestess’s face…

The High Priestess was quick to catch her balance again. Her knife cut into Gil’s shield. “ _You_ —”

A new voice cut her off, slicing down the corridor like a blade itself. Blazing with fury and Gift. “ _Nameeri_ , I believe I made _clear_ **_eight years ago_** what would happen if you _came near my children again_. Did you think something has **_changed?_** ”

Before she’d finished the second word, Zeetha had left Gil and the High Priestess behind (temporarily) and started sprinting, past her aunt and uncle and all the other onlooking family, to the newest warrior to the fray. She was tall, dark green hair speckled with grey and travel-clothes still dusty from the road, with a spiked golden crown on her brow and a sword in each hand.

“ _Mom!_ ”

.

For half a moment, if that—a quarter or less—Zantabraxus thought there must have been some mistake. Not that it wasn’t an _emergency_ , obviously, but this couldn’t be her son—he was too big, too tall, too infinitely more ferocious than the baby who had gripped her thumb and smiled like a morning sun. And he stood _exactly_ like Klaus on the defensive—that was, the verge of attack: knees bent and slightly too far apart, shoulders forward, chin up like he’d glare down the world before it even got a shot in. Even the hair was the same exact scruff, though bronze with childhood rather than white with laboratory incidents. Zanta had heard too many tales of mad Europan science, and encountered too many bizarrities in her own adventures, to dismiss outright the idea of age-reduction.

Then he turned around to stare back at her, dark eyes wide as when he was small, and it was _Gilgamesh_ , her Gil, burning with the Gift and standing exactly like his father, and if Nameeri didn’t step back within the next _second_ , there _was_ going to be a civil war this time and Zanta _wouldn’t give a damn_.

The High Priestess must have seen something in her eyes, or heard it ringing in her voice, the feeling Zanta had that at any moment she might spout fur and horns and tusks and turn into a _literal_ raging mother highgoat. She stepped back.

And Zeetha slammed into her mother facefirst, ducking under the blades Zanta had been holding bare since she arrived to hear the High Priestess was in the Palace. She clutched Zanta in a fierce hug. “Mom!”

Before Zanta could return the embrace, Zeetha pulled back again, straightening like a warrior and correcting herself. “Kolee!” She grabbed her mother’s arm and began towing her down the corridor almost as fast as Zanta had been stalking already, expounding with the breathless speed that only the very young could achieve. “Gil came to my room like by Luheia’s Mirror but not because it was his own thing that he made, because he has the Gift really strong, and I tied him up and went to class but he got loose and came through the vents so I hid him at the lookout place in—”

“Focus on the situation at hand,” Zanta said automatically, a lesson drummed into her own head as a zumil. Zeetha took a deep breath, revving up to start again, but it was too late because they had caught up with the rest of the group (Zemare and Nod helpfully moving to the sides) and even the High Priestess glaring down her nose was forgotten as Zanta dropped to one knee in front of her son.

“Gilgamesh?” She wanted to touch him, to seize him and hold him until he stopped being slim and peaky and fever-bright in the eyes, though she recognized the Gift in that light. It was fading already, danger past. She wanted to hold him close until _all_ danger had passed, ever—until the years themselves were reversed and he was an infant again, small and plump and beaming and no time had ever been lost. She’d even sheathed her swords for it without realizing, and reached for his arms—and froze, unsure, because she didn’t even know if he knew his name. She’d only read it in a postscript, after all, in a worthless letter that was priceless because it had at least promised that he and his (blithering ass of a) father were alive. Then. No, Zeetha had called him ‘Gil’; he must know—Chump must be somewhere—

Gil stared at her with wide, dark eyes while she froze, caught between wonder and hope and too many questions, and she thought she saw the jumble reflected back at her as she drank in every feature of his face and tried to connect them with the ones she remembered. It wasn’t hard. There was still herself in the shape of the chin and the eyes, same color now as Zeetha’s, and Chump in the arch of the nose and the dangling ears.

He dropped his shield-gun and flung himself into her arms with a wordless cry, Zeetha not half a second behind, and Zantabraxus caught them and for the first time in years held both her children in her arms and did not try to stop her tears, because a true warrior did not flinch from true emotion—and it would have been a pointless exercise anyway.

“You’re here, oh Goddess, you’re truly _here_.” She loosened her grip, just slightly, so she could look at them both. They looked almost nothing like twins, save for the eyes, mud-brown with a hint of green, and the shocks of hair (she noticed Zeetha wasn’t trying to tamp hers down as she often did.) And the matching expressions of delight, through tears, which Zanta felt put her own wet cheeks in the _best_ of company.

“But– how?” she asked, in wonderment. “Do you know where your father is? Where have you _been?_ ” Her gaze finally caught on the wires sticking up over their ears, off of unaccountable leather bands. Other maternal instincts kicked in. “And _what_ have you got on your heads?”

Their twinned ( _her twins_ ) faces, which had started to fall at the second and third questions, lit up again at the fourth.

“I made them!” Gilgamesh said eagerly. “Me and Zed! See, we couldn’t _talk_ —”

And then some _Goddess-damned messenger_ skidded into the corridor, shouting, “The Valley is under attack! My queen—!”


	15. Chapter 12: More (Re)Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think we all know what's happening in this one.

Gil felt Zeetha’s shock before he parsed the runner’s words, so he was at least nominally prepared for the War Queen to pull away. Zeetha’s mother (“ko” in Skiff.) _His_ mother. Or maybe the shock just flowed into the storm already running around inside him, and the loss was almost insignificant compared to…what he had been expecting, maybe. He’d invented a machine to find his family and it had _worked_ , for a sister and cousins and aunts and uncles and a mother who hugged even tighter than he had dreamed, so tight it almost hurt, the same way the metal beams around the engine rooms on Castle Wulfenbach were nearly too hot to sit on—but he did anyway, and fell asleep to the vibrations and the roar. He could feel his mother’s heartbeat (his _mother’s_ ) and his and Zeetha’s all pounding together like the arrhythmic engines. He’d never imagined the green hair and gleaming swords, and somehow those only made it all _better_.

So yes, it hurt when she pulled away, the same way it might have hurt if an engine failed—but she didn’t let go of his hand either, encompassing it and squeezing so it didn’t seem like she was ever going to let go. Gil didn’t mind a bit. He trotted to keep up with her long stride back down the hallway. On the other side, with the other hand, Zeetha jogged the same way.

“What sort of attack?” the War Queen asked, brisk and official where a moment ago she had been soft. But some of that blade-edge tautness was fixed in how tightly she kept ahold of her children as everyone else fell in behind.

“Energy blasts, my queen,” the messenger reported, keeping up on Gil’s other side. Between Zeetha’s reactions and what he’d learned himself, he could just barely follow the rapid-fire Skiff. “They’re coming from the sky, but we can’t see where. The shield is absorbing them, but—”

Between one step and the next, the stone of the hallways, ceiling and walls and palace, shivered like a struck bell. Gil clutched his mother’s (!) hand a little tighter, and felt through their headbands Zeetha doing the same.

“…we aren’t sure for how long,” the messenger finished dryly. “And the source the strikes seem to be coming closer.”

They were approaching another junction. (His mother) the War Queen looked over her shoulder. “Nameeri—”

“Obviously I’m going to the Temple,” said the High Priestess. She was curt, but the anger was gone from her voice, too. “We’ll see to the shield. Get your fliers moving, _Skifandrias_.”

The War Queen gave her a stiff nod and the High Priestess peeled off, nose still in the air _just_ like Zulenna at her worst. Gil hardly had to imagine how she must have barged into the tunnels of the War Palace and bullied her way down to the infirmary. At least she was stalking towards someone else, now.

“Zanta,” said Zemare. She’d taken the messenger’s place. “Energy blasts sounds Europan. Unless one of the Dark Countries has developed…”

She glanced back at Nod. He shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”

“I know,” the queen said grimly. The Palace wavered again; she didn’t. “Which is why we’re bringing him down before Nameeri and her priestesses get moving.” She raised her voice. “I hope someone’s already gotten the flight decks moving, because I want birds in the air _yesterday_.”

“Yes, my queen,” chorused at least three people behind them. Gil peered back to see a couple guardswomen jog off backwards, while another started running ahead.

“Gilgamesh,” said the queen (his _mother_ ), and his head whipped right around to stare at her. Her eyes wrinkled in a smile, though she kept pulling him along and her speech was firm. Skiff-accented Romanian. “Do you have any idea what Chump—what your father might be using to keep his craft hidden? And how he’s hoping to break the shield?”

Gil felt his heart fall, and something lower knot into a teary ball. “It– it can’t be Chump,” he said, and even the silliness of the name didn’t stop the urge to curl in and not meet her eyes. He’d known his mother for six minutes and already he was ruining her day. “I’m an orphan. I mean, I thought I was.” He gripped her hand, and hoped Zeetha could feel his gratitude for the fierce rush of inclusion she sent him. “In Europa. I didn’t know about you. But I don’t know…I don’t think…”

When the Palace shook, the War Queen (his mother) hadn’t flinched. Now she stopped, so hard that her siblings nearly crashed into her, and Zeetha and Gil both stumbled.

“He’s gone?” she whispered, and Gil wasn’t used to seeing that sort of expression on adults. Sad and shocked and staring like some part of the world was ending and they didn’t _understand_. Zantabraxus wasn’t the one wearing a thunjahot, but Gil felt her distress like a punch in the gut. If (his mother) the War Queen didn’t know what to do, how could _Gil_ manage?

“Zanta…” said Nod.

“No.” (Mother) the queen shook her head, slipping back into spark-laced Skiff. “ _No_ , not—” She held Gil’s hand so tightly it really did start to hurt, and he barely noticed the stones shaking again.

“You said you don’t know,” she demanded in Romanian. “ _What_ don’t you know? What _do_ you know?”

“ **Zanta** ,” tried Zemare. The War Queen ignored her.

Gil tried not to shrink under the queen’s demanding stare. “Not anything, really. He _probably_ wasn’t a mad pig farmer.” He still didn’t know why that story was there: for lack of anything else, maybe. Or—“Do you know if Baron Wulfenbach knows about Skifander? And is helping keep it secret? Because we found a fake story in my records, me an’ Tarvek, so maybe the Baron made it fake on _purpose_ , because he knows the truth and is hiding it. _He_ might know what happened to– to my father.”

The War Queen’s (Mother’s) expression took a turn for the unreadable, save bafflement. “Baron… Wulfenbach?”

Gil nodded. “I live in his school on Castle Wulfenbach.” _Lived_ , he wanted to say, but everything was still a dream and he didn’t dare risk it. “It’s– The other kids are—”

He hesitated. He didn’t want to make her feel even worse. “I had a friend,” he concluded. “And it’s really fun to explore the Castle.”

“Baron Wulfenbach,” she repeated, entirely neutral. “ _Klaus_ Wulfenbach?”

“Yes?” Gil took some comfort in Zeetha’s confusion being equal to his own.

The Palace shook again, harder this time—not moving far but _intensely_ , hard and fast, like hummingbird wings or wire buzzing with current or _not how rock was supposed to act_. The War Queen (Mother) (‘Ko’?) looked up at the ceiling and shouted in Skiff like she was arguing with it, except all Gil understood was the first “You–” and then all Zeetha could translate was that it was a _lot_ of bad words, more even than _she_ knew what they meant. From what she could send, and how long their mother went without breath, Gil was _impressed_.

He didn’t have time to get back to anything but confusion before (Mother) the War Queen was dragging them both down the hall again—or up, really; the passageway was slanted. It opened to fresh air and a wide, flat terrace extending at least a quarter kilometer out from the side of the War Cliff. It wasn’t, Gil remembered from the lookout-ledge, a particularly unique outcropping, but it was so large and empty—and they’d run past a couple of the gliders like giant paper planes in the preceding room—that this must be one of the flight decks. Most of the gliders were in use, flying some sort of search pattern above the slight blur in the air that marked the great energy shield over the mouth of the Valley.

It was much blurrier than usual. Seemingly out of nowhere—high, empty air towards the Temple end of the Valley—Gil fancied he could hear a faint whine as what looked like red lightning tore out of nowhere to stab at the Great Shield. The energy field rippled, paling at the point of contact and roiling at the edges. The Valley cliffs to which it was anchored followed suit. _Fascinating_. Was it being breached, or disrupted, or overloaded—

There was another obscuration in the air, a shimmer that bubbled out of the Temple and rippled down the Valley, and as it swept through the area whence the lightning had sprung, something phased into view. A zeppelin ship, an odd silvery-purple color, hurtling downward with death rays mounted on the bow.

“The Baron,” Gil squeaked. “He _sent_ someone.”

There was no Wulfenbach sigil in sight but Gil had stared out enough windows and stolen glances at enough schematics and flight schedules to know a Wulfenbach courier ship when he saw one. Even if it had acquired atypical death rays poking out the small windows.

It barely seemed to need them. The ship phased out of sight again as the Temple’s spell passed it by, like a radio signal lost to static, but its velocity was much too steep and fast for a change of course. It appeared again as it slammed into Ashtara’s Shield of Skifander.

The Shield, which Zeetha said had been in place since the first queens and warriors came to the valley, which was still roiling with the death ray strikes, went perfectly still—like a lake, like glass, just _barely_ visible. The ship sat frozen in midair.

Then it _blazed_ with the same white-edged crimson energy blast as before, prickling over every surface of the ship like paint on Mars’s chariot—for a millisecond, before the lightning erupted with an omnidirectional **_CRACK_** , bloody veins striking through the air. Fractures in the glass.

The ship fell as the Shield disappeared.

Gil clung to his mother’s arm. He was in _so much trouble_.

“He’d better have come _himself_ if he knows what’s _good_ for him.” The War Queen snarled in Skiff. She ripped her arm away and stalked forward, and didn’t notice that Gil stumbled in its absence.

She tacked towards the zeppelin righting itself high above the River. It spiraled down, doing its best to evade the gliders converging and firing on it. A couple death rays fired back erratically, but they seemed spent, and even a courier ship couldn’t beat the sleek, one-women gliders for maneuverability. Scorch marks were starting to disrupt the purple-grey sheen.

Zantabraxus sketched something on the back of her hand and held it to her mouth to bellow in Romanian, every line of her body radiating _Cross_ , and Utter Unconcern for the firefight. “ _WHAT_ IN THE NAME OF THE _SOULLESS WANDERER_ HAVE YOU BEEN _DOING WITH OUR SON?_ ”

Gil thought he must have stumbled again, because the world swayed the same way.

Zeetha clutched his arm. _‘Our son’?!? Coulditbe Father(Zo)(dontknow **anything** ) coulditbecoulditbe **be** pleaseplease but why attacking—_

“Gil!” she said, even though he could hear everything she was thinking. “Your **Baron?** ”

“He’s not– not _my_ –” It felt like his mind was stuttering too. The _Baron?_ That didn’t—but he was— _Baron Wulfenbach_. Gil wasn’t actually sure the Baron was entirely _human_ , and not in the “construct” sense. In the _fought with the Heterodyne Boys_ and _built Castle Wulfenbach_ and _beat **everyone** in Europa _ sense, and the way Gil couldn’t remember ever seeing him not commanding or fighting or striding about like he could hold the whole world and might at any moment stop humoring the delusion that _it_ could hold _him_.

Except—he actually had rather a _lot_ of memories of the Baron, including from when he was really little. He’d always thought it was because he was one of the first students in the school, before Castle Wulfenbach even lifted off.

“THAT’S RIGHT, GET _OVER_ HERE!” the War Queen (Mother) snarled, pointing to the empty space beside her. She added in Skiff, “ALL WARRIORS, BREAK OFF.”

The Wulfenbach ship had turned towards her when she started yelling; it had gone so low dodging the gliders that it now had to labor upward to meet her demand. The gliders broke off, the envelope scorched but miraculously unbroken, but the engine leaked menacing black smoke.

“That’s her ‘zumil-you’re-in-so-much-trouble’ voice!” Zeetha said breathlessly.

Gil was electing to just watch, grounded by little more than Zeetha’s nails digging unconsciously unto his arm. The thunjahot didn’t help; she was almost vibrating with excitement in her body, much less in Gil’s mind. But he didn’t think to take it off.

Zantabraxus didn’t so much as flinch as the zeppelin skidded past her to a landing. She just turned to watch, one hand on her hip and one raised towards the swords on her back. The sparks the cabin threw up against the stone were the final straw for the engine—it exploded, bright orange petrol flames licking against the red-brown Skifandrian cliff.

The cabin door opened and the Baron leapt out even before the whole thing screeched to a stop. He didn’t pay attention to the fire either, though it whipped at his back. But there was no greatcoat to catch, just an ordinary shirt and trousers already smoke-stained, and none of it did _anything_ to diminish Gil’s impression that the Baron was something from a mythology book more than the real world.

“ ** _Zanta!_** ” he shouted, Spark blazing. He didn’t have a volume-augmenting glyph but he was almost as loud. “ ** _Where’s_** —”

He didn’t finish because the War Queen had crossed the space between them and slapped him in the face so hard Gil could hear the crack over the roar of the burning engine. He missed his own gasp.

“ _Gil!_ ”

That voice was higher, and even more familiar, and out-of-place enough to tear Gil’s eyes away from the Baron and the War Queen.

“ _Tarvek?_ ”

It _was_ Tarvek, running towards him from the burning ship. The envelope still hadn’t caught—nobody was paying attention—but the cabin was full of smoke and Tarvek was as messy with it as the Baron. Messier, because his clothes were weirdly white under the ash. Except for his cape, which was the same sort of silvery purple as the zeppelin.

Gil ran forward to meet him, Zeetha a step behind. “What are you doing here?”

“Gil! You’re _alright!_ ” Tarvek grabbed his shoulders and spun him half-around, looking him up and down to verify the analysis. Gil wasn’t sure he could say the same—Tarvek’s eyes were fever-bright and he didn’t even seem to _care_ that his clothes were messy, which was _weird_ for Tarvek. Even his hair was almost like a proper madboy, ashy and sticking up in every direction.

“Of course I’m alright! What are you _doing_ here?” Tarvek was supposed to be in Sturmhalten, since—

Gil suddenly remembered they hadn’t spoken since he’d gotten them both caught in the Record Vault. He started to shy back.

Tarvek used him as leverage to bounce on the balls of his feet (his _bare_ feet, and sooty clothes, in _Skifander._ ) “The Baron brought me when I broke through and figured it out!” He leaned close and lowered his voice intently. “Gil– the _Baron_ is your _father!_ ”

He pulled back expectantly, hands still on Gil’s shoulders like he was bequeathing something.

“I…think so, yeah,” Gil managed.

Before Tarvek could pout much, Zeetha tugged Gil’s arm. He startled. He’d almost forgotten she was there. Most of what she was sending through the thunjahot was mixed up with his thoughts and feelings as well—excitement and bewilderment and too much adrenaline.

“I think your Baron is definitely Chump,” she said, like the cat that got the mimmoth, and pointed back to the Baron and the War Queen (Mother). Gil and Tarvek turned to look.

“Eewww!” they said, almost as one, and turned away again. Tarvek put up a hand to shield his face.

“What?” asked Zeetha, baffled. “They’re kissing.” She looked back to the adults, a terrifyingly evaluating expression on her face. “They’re kissing a **lot**.”

“It’s _gross_ ,” Gil said firmly, Romanian to her Skiff. He could feel how she didn’t think it was gross at all, but she was _wrong_. It looked like they were fighting to _eat_ each other, all wrapped around and devouring like pythons.

“ _Indecent_ ,” agreed Tarvek. He could understand her indifferent tone. He sniffed, staring pointedly in the opposite direction. “Though I guess I _shouldn’t_ expect much _better_ from such...”

He looked around for real, careful not to turn his head so far he saw the Baron and the War Queen (Gil’s mother)…kissing. “Where _are_ we?”

Zeetha started to bristle, then bit her lip.

“Skifander!” said Gil. Oh, he could _introduce_ everyone! His _family!_ He tugged Zeetha proudly forward. “This is Zeetha, my secret missing twin. And that’s—”

He risked a glance over his shoulder. Thank heavens, they weren’t kissing anymore. Though they were still standing so close they might have been, talking with their arms wrapped around each other. The War Queen (Mother) must have stopped her heirographics because Gil couldn’t hear anything.

“That’s the War Queen,” he said, just as proudly. “Zantabraxus of Skifander. She’s our mother.”

 _No tellinghim aboutSkifander_ , Zeetha sent him in a tide of distress. **_Secret_** _‘secret valley’ younotunderstand?_

_Whyworry? noworry its **Tarvek** (sneaking through half-built labs, sleepovers and nightmare-secrets, sharing books and stolen chocolate) and hesalready **here**._

_Hesa **real** foreigner Idontknow **not** ourdecision._ She chewed the inside of her cheek, looking back over her shoulder. _(Mom(Ko))theWarQueen decidesabout—_

The thought cut off from Gil’s perspective because Tarvek had lifted the thunjahot off his brow. “ _Fascinating_.” He turned it around, examining the radial circuitry. “I can see the _radio component_ , but what’s enabling the _telepathic connection?_ That _is_ what you’re doing, yes? The _brass?_ How does it _conduct?_ ” He started picked at the metal coating over the glyphs. “I don’t _see_ a _further_ _electrical component_. I _was_ _working_ on a machine to transcribe _directly from the mind_ ; the _Baron_ _took it away_ before I could _finish_ but it used _metalectrical synthesis_ to _correlate_ the _cerebral_ _currents_ …”

Gil could feel his own spark lighting back up. Tarvek really _was_ in breakthrough: **_outstanding_** _!_ “There’s _no more current!”_ He tugged the headband back, at least enough to flip it around and show off the marks on the inner side. “They call it ‘ _heirographics’_ , see, _graphical representations_ —”

“Gil!” Zeetha exclaimed, in Skiff. “That’s **very** secret!”

“Why?” he asked, as bewildered as she’d been at his reaction to the (really incredibly gross) kissing. “It’s _science_. _True progress_ can _only_ be achieved through _collaborative_ _effort_.” It was one of the basic axioms of Aristotle’s Scientific Method, followed of course by “True progress can also be achieved the drive to annihilate all possible competition.”

Zeetha’s reply was put off by a loud crashing noise. All three children spun around to look.

There was a gaping hole in the Civil Palace up the Valley, and a raging green fire. Mother (the War Queen) and the Baron had sprung apart. A cloud of war-gliders was rising again, from the other flight decks where they’d settled, to challenge the…things now swooping over the Valley.

They didn’t look that big, maybe twice as big as humans, but they were scaly and brown-red like the stones, and there were people riding them. And the people were throwing rocks, and when a lizard-bird breathed on a rock (with an ear-splitting _shriek!_ ), the rock caught luminescent green fire, like spring leaves turned from life to blazing death, and exploded even further when they hit ground—or cliff, or River. The first had hit the Civics Palace, up near the head of the Valley; the next crashed into the Skiff and sent up a gout of steam, and the third blazed through it like a spring comet and hit the Temple dead-on, smashing Ashtara’s face into pieces. The warrior-gliders fired back, yellow glyph-blasts, but the attack kept coming.

“GET BACK!” The Baron shouted in Romanian and Mother (the War Queen) in Skiff, but they pointed as one towards the hanger. Mother had used one of her swords.

Zeetha dragged Gil and Gil dragged Tarvek, who looked like he was already trying to figure out what chemicals could cause such bright green flames. Gil agreed it needed investigating, but there was a _time_ and a _place_ , and attack by flying, fire-breathing dinosaurs was _not it_. Gil had managed _his_ breakthrough much more sensibly. (He’d disappeared into the secret libraries and laboratories of Castle Wulfenbach for two days, not talking to anyone and barely remembering to eat, but he’d invented a _teleport_ , where Tarvek didn’t seem to have _anything_ , and _Gil_ hadn’t gotten _caught_.)

They were almost back inside when there was a whoosh like air leaving a vacuum followed by a blast too loud to be heard, with a flicker of blinding yellow-green on the periphery of his vision. The percussion knocked Gil, still holding tight to his friend and his sister, forward, down, and senseless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Morporkian sports goddess voice* YOU THINK IT'S ALL OVER?
> 
> (There is, however, probably going to be another relatively long gap now. Sorry. Not even because I'll be busier - though Spring Semester does start Monday. Just because of how my brain is feeling re: this fic. I do have plans, though, for what happens next! Mostly coherent plans!)


End file.
